© 2007 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp. 680–685) doi:10.1598/JAAL.50.8.6 LITERACY & IDENTITY Action heroes and literate sidekicks: Literacy and identity in popular culture Bronwyn T. Williams Williams is editor of the Literacy & Identity department. He teaches at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, USA. People spend a lot of time worrying about the ef- lives. Even if we don’t worry that playing a video fects popular culture may be having on adoles- game or watching a movie will lead impression- cents. They worry that there is too much sex on able teens to acts of violence or drug use, we can television and too much violence in the movies. still recognize that popular culture forms repro- Movie stars and supermodels create unrealistic duce and distribute the most powerful narratives expectations of body image. Characters who and iconic images that dominate our lives. The smoke, drink, and use other drugs on the screen producers of popular culture, in search of the make such actions look appealing. Disrespectful largest audiences possible, draw on the stories, attitudes, particularly toward parents and other characters, and ideas that they hope will resonate authority figures, seem to permeate many pro- with the greatest number of people. Such narra- grams and movies. In short, there is an ongoing tives and ideas don’t create culture from whole and pervasive concern that the representations of cloth, but they do reinforce the ways we all per- people and their actions in popular culture, from ceive identities and actions in the culture in movies to television to video games to popular which we live. music, will influence the identities and actions of Yet, given the multiple concerns about what adolescents. Indeed, it seems impossible that the is portrayed in popular culture and the power of relentless stream of popular culture narratives popular media to re-create and reproduce domi- and images could not have some effect on the nant ideas and images, it is perhaps surprising identities young people construct for themselves, that literacy teachers and scholars have paid little the ways in which they model their relationships, attention to the ways in which reading and writ- and the narratives they imagine for their lives. ing are represented in it. Even as teachers worry Although most of us would discount a di- about the ways that popular culture influences rect and reductive causal relationship between teenage ideas about gender or sexual orientation popular culture and the actions of individual or race or social class, rare is the discussion of adolescents, that doesn’t mean that we are uncon- popular culture’s role in shaping perceptions of cerned about the influence of the images and nar- adolescents about literacy practices and about ratives on the screens that dominate so many teen themselves as writers and readers. Although such 680 JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 50:8 MAY 2007 LITERACY & IDENTITY representations happen in many popular culture The question is not whether literacy prac- forms, I want to focus, for the sake of brevity, on tices are present in contemporary popular cul- representations in movies and television ture; it is much harder to find a movie or programs—representations that raise issues that program without literacy represented in it than it can be extended to other forms of popular culture. is to find one where people are reading or writ- ing. The more important and useful question is The lack of attention given to representa- how do we in the audience interpret the literacy tions of literacy in popular culture may start from practices we find in popular culture? What do a misperception of which movies and television such representations tell us about how we think programs contain reading and writing. When I of the ways that reading and writing construct have talked about literacy practices in popular our public identities? culture, what many teachers think I am talking about are the movies or programs that are set in school or focused on teaching. The same titles Patterns in popular culture come up time and again: The Dead Poets’ Society, Educating Rita, Finding Forrester, Boston Public, When you begin to look for them, it becomes re- and so on. These programs and movies often fo- markable how many times you see reading and cus on literacy as the catalyst to personal growth writing in popular culture: and public triumph and are certainly worth con- sidering when we think about this issue. • An attorney on a television drama is hand- ed a document, and she reads it aloud to This list of triumph-of-literacy films and others in the room. programs, however, is far too limited to cover the range of literacy practices actually portrayed on • A man in a comedy film sits in a huge cor- television, film, and in video games. In fact, much porate office typing at his computer while of popular culture is filled with representations of his supervisors complain to him about the people reading and writing. Movies and televi- forms he forgot to fill out. sion programs are filled with scenes of people • A government agent in a television pro- from all social classes, races, cultures, sexes, and gram types in a password that allows her age groups reading and writing. The contexts and to download and steal secret files. the purposes for their writing may vary widely, • A woman in a movie writes a thank-you and the literacy practices may often seem inci- letter to a man who has done a favor for dental to the central plot. Yet, if you look at how her family. literacy practices are portrayed in popular cul- ture, if you pay attention to who gets to write and read and what effect such actions have on their These quick examples are only brief lives, you begin to see patterns of how literacy is glimpses of the myriad literacy practices that can perceived in the culture at large. Such representa- be seen in movies or television programs. tions hold true in films and television programs Although the examples I’m using in this column across cultural boundaries. If you look at the pat- are from U.S. programs, similar scenes take place terns of literacy representation, you see how those in popular culture from around the world. Also, patterns repeat and reproduce dominant cultural the global reach of U.S. popular culture makes the representation of literacy in U.S. movies and tele- ideas about reading and writing in the same way vision programs an issue that has to be confront- that the unceasing images of armies of super- ed across cultures. models influence ideas of body shape, or that ro- mance narratives influence contemporary That there are numerous representations of concepts of love and relationships. reading and writing in any given movie or television JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 50:8 MAY 2007 681 LITERACY & IDENTITY program may be interesting, but what do we do mistake in believing that adolescents are simplis- with such information? After all, outside of tic cultural dupes unable to resist any image or triumph-of-literacy stories, literacy is rarely the message that is portrayed on a glowing screen. central concern of most popular culture narra- As literacy teachers, then, it is important that tives. Yet the way literacy is portrayed in popular we recognize the narratives and assumptions culture does reveal some of the larger culture’s about literacy that our students, and the rest of common assumptions about literacy and identity the culture in which they live, see time and again. in terms of the connections to perceptions of so- Because the representations of literacy practices cial status, cultural power, and personal relation- are often incidental to the central narratives of ships. We have long been comfortable interpreting films and television programs, they are perhaps popular culture in ways that illuminate the accept- more likely to be accepted as normal portrayals of able and persuasive narratives about many of the behavior and attitudes and pass without as much ways in which people perform their identities. For critical notice. Yet if we accept that popular cul- example, when we think about the role of women ture affects the clothes students wear, the music in the workplace we can easily refer to the portray- they listen to, and the catch phrases they repeat als of women who are attorneys or detectives in then we need to consider how the literacy prac- the current television series Law and Order or as tices they see in so much of popular culture influ- physicists, doctors, or politicians in recent movies. ences how they think about reading and writing These images are a reflection of our contemporary before we ever open our mouths in the classroom. ideas about the subject. We can contrast these cur- rent portrayals with those of women in the 1950s who were seen most often as secretaries to attor- Literacy and action heroes neys in programs such as Perry Mason or house- wives such as June Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver.In As one example of the kinds of literacy practices the same way, we can look at who gets to read and that occur routinely in popular culture, consider write and for what reasons to see what concepts of the genre of the action film or television pro- literacy are most acceptable and persuasive in con- gram. As Amy Zenger and I have pointed out temporary culture. (Williams & Zenger, 2004, 2007), in movies, in- cluding those in the action genre, reading and I am not arguing for a direct connection be- writing often fulfill established conventions in the tween any single scene or group of movies or tele- narrative as well as serving as markers for the vision programs and the actions of adolescents.