Popular Culture as Folk Culture.

 This week’s topic of popular culture as folk culture provided to very powerful and thought provoking essays. Although I am sure many will disagree with me, I personally do not enjoy  the style of Miguel Angel Asturias writing. I am not a big fan of mythical or surreal stories. However with this considered I was able to take away numerous underlying messages and symbols from the several stories provided. I found all the stories to represent greater or larger qualities and aspects of life. Dressing up  these underlying messages and symbols into a mythical setting, I believe was solely Austurias way of getting across important things but doing so creatively  in a different or "fun" manner. As much as I enjoyed Asturias essay to me it failed in comparison to that of Jose Maria Arguedas. I found Arguedas to be very powerful and enjoyed reading it. The "karma" or irony of which the essay evolves is dramatic and defiantly made me think deeply about situations of this sort in not only my life but also the lives of those around me. That over clichéd saying of "its what you are on the inside that matter" has great relevance to this story. That in the end we are not judged( *judged being a controversial term not intended to directly imply that of Christianity) by our wealth or power but rather our soul and the people that we are. I liked the stories twisted ending in which the reader is able to be 'joyous' in the events that occurred. Quite literally in the story the pongo treated the master like gold and in turn the master treated the pongo like "shit". In turn the Karma of the situation evolves in the pongos dream where he licks honey off the master and the master shot off the pongo. Both of these stories and folk culture as a whole play a large role in the creation and idealizations and standards of popular culture. Folk culture has a huge influence on this popular culture.  It is evident that even from Asturias paper of which myths and stories were believed thousands of years ago to more recently Arguedas paper that these mythical and outstanding stories have an undeniably large influence of culture to this day. Though as I said, I did not enjoy the writing style of Austurias but felt in the end that the messages and symbols that came from each story made up for my dislike in his style. As for Aguedas paper I completely immerged myself in it and extensively enjoyed it. Over I felt both were beneficial to me and feel as though I learned a lot through analyzing and reflecting upon these two essays.