How do people see how to live a good and meaningful life?

Third draft
When figuring out what other people think about what’s good and meaningful in their lives, we took to the streets outside our school and started to interview people. Most people let us interview them when we asked. They seemed interested in our project and they stopped and thought deeply about the questions we asked. When asked to rank themselves between 1-10 on how meaningful their lives are there was a couple of people that gave themselves 10’s. One man said “I hope I’m a 10, I haven’t done enough in life, want to get through everything before my life is meaningless”. We interviewed the school nurse and she said “ I would give myself a 10 because I am helping people in my line of work and I feel like I am making a difference”. One woman said, “I would give myself an 8, a 10 if I won the lottery”. The people that gave themselves a 10 seem to think that their lives are just bursting with importance and meaning. There are so many ways to define what’s meaningful and meaningless. It all depends on the person you ask. People’s answers differ but once you look at them as a whole you can see the small similarities. To show us we are not as much different from each other as we think.
Jace said, “ We make our own lives meaningful”. But other people, when asked what makes their lives meaningful responded with a quick and strong answer, family and friends. One man said, “ Family is most meaningful because of everything we do together and support each other.” Seven out of eleven people gave almost the same response where family was the most meaningful to them. The same guy also said, “ That something is meaningful if it keeps you going from day to day.” Four out of eleven people agreed that the things that are meaningful in your life are the things that are important and make you happy and you care about. Two of the people also said that love was meaningful. Family and friends are meaningful and so we then asked them what were the meaningless things in their lives. One lady said “ Catty people” when asked what’s meaningless in life. Catty people are people that like to judge others. Most of the answers were negative aspects on how our culture is represented. One man said, “ Shallow people have meaningless lives” while another man, said, “ Material objects like money are meaningless”. Someone else said human dramas. All these things add up to how most people live their lives cause its human nature to obsess over material objects and to judge other people. These people that have been described as having meaningless lives are usually people who think/ care about their own lives more then they do others.

Corporate culture plays a big role on how people perceive how to live a good and meaningful life. All you have to do is walk out of your house and your “attacked” with corporate messages. There are all sorts of billboards, TV shows, magazines, books, commercials, movies, and the list goes on and on and each of those things are putting ideas in your head. There are the 3 categories in popular culture and they are corporate culture, folk culture and big subcultures. All of these things have either mainstream messages, marginal messages or prohibited messages. For example in vogue and people magazines they tell women to become beautiful by looking young and healthy. It’s also good to have the hottest fashion and the right accessories. All of these things add up to having a good and meaningful life. All of this is possessing materialistic goods is what makes your life more meaningful.
There is also the message for young kids that teamwork and following your dreams lead to a good and meaningful life. In the movie High School Musical 3 it’s all about working as a team to overcome any obstacle. There is also the part where Troy Bolton the main character goes through a dilemma where he does not know if he should follow his fathers dream or his own. In the end Troy decides to follow his own dream and in doing so makes his life more meaningful. Then there is the corporate message where men are supposed to be dominant over the women and are supposed to be the protectors saving the damsel in distress. In Twilight Bella falls in love with a vampire named Edward. Edward is the protector and dominates in the relationship. Even James makes a comment saying how Edward was keeping Bella weak and he should have changed her to make them equal. Then there is the perception that girls will go for the bad guy. Bella falls into this category by forsaking all others for her love for Edward. She goes for the dangerous guy who at any moment could kill her. Jacob argues that Bella should fall in love with him because he is the safe choice and she would not have to change for him. With all the options she chooses Edward and later becomes a vampire.
Other then movies and books music videos are another way in which popular culture spreads its message on how to live a good and meaningful life. Good Life by Kanye West feat. T-Pain is one example. The song basically talks about how to live a good life. Kanye goes on and on about realism instead of just the dreams. He goes on to talk about how having money, fame and girls is achieving a good life. He talks about material objects instead of other values/ aspects of what makes up a good life. He says in his song "Havin' money's the everythin' that havin' it is". He also goes to talk about freedom as an aspect of the good life. "The good life, let's go on a livin' spree- Shit, they say the best things in life are free". The images in the music video are very creative. The people are in black and white while the other images are in color. Some of the images in the video that further explain what's needed to have a good life are cars, money, woman who are wearing very skimpy clothes and where the picture is focused on their butts. Even though money is something he mentions there is a part in the song where he says "Whether you broke or rich you gotta get biz". There are also like the whole parts where he's going throw your hands up kinda thing like if you agree go ahead and there are images of a bunch of hands being thrown up.
Another music video is Lip Gloss by Lil Mamma. In the video Lil Mamma tells her mom how she thinks no one will like her and so her mom gives her some lip-gloss. As soon as she puts it on she’s the most popular girl in school. Every one wants to be her friend. Henry made very interesting insights into the video. I would have never have thought/ caught how she says how no body even knows her but still like her regardless just because she has nice clothes. I had not caught the line where she says no one knows anything about her but they still like her. When you listen to the song you just pass over that and only hear how her lip-gloss is cool. Though the message was obvious how possessions make you have a good life. Andy’s comments made me notice how in the video during all of the attention she was getting, she was also in control and how everyone followed her. I agree that most people feel like material goods will get them far. Even Lil Mama's mom goes on to say how it was her all along and not the lip-gloss but Lil Mama doesn't listen cause she likes all the attention she's getting. Music videos are also another way to advertise things its not all about the music and words like with L'Oreal paying to put their product in the video, so when people watch it they would want the product.