Mackenzie Chen and Oscar Melendez Vera

Description

Some of the major ideas they discussed were topics relating to socio-political values and how they are integrated into popular culture through contemporary media, examples such as the movies and shows like Barbie and Into the Spiderverse, differences in the lifestyles between rural and more urban areas, the controversial history of slavery in UVA, and iconoclasm relating to confederate symbols. The pair spoke mostly on how certain demographics such as gender and race are represented in popular media and the polarization between groups of people who refuse to understand each other. For most of the topics, they agreed on nearly all of them. Mackenzie and Oscar differ in backgrounds as Oscar is from a more rural area and Mackenzie is from a more suburban area. They did differ a bit on how representation should be approached on popular media, such as the extent of pandering, but ultimately had similar opinions.

Participants

• Oscar Melendez Vera
  
• Mackenzie Chen
  
• One Small Step at UVA
  

Interview By

• One Small Step at UVA