BP#5 Popular?

Before you complete your next blog post, go back to the class WIKI and read through the comments made for task #4 and 5, where you discuss together what qualities are important for a story to be considered popular and whether POPULAR =GOOD.

Some specific student comments in response to the POPULAR = GOOD strand are found below:

J. J. : No, just because something is popular doesn't mean we're experiencing the best quality stories. Take the Twilight series movies for example, sure a lot of people read the books and were desperate to see their favourite story play out in front of them. But, I looked up the box office sales statistics and Twilight brought in $392,616,625 in theatres, which would have been those die-hard book fans. Then the second movie, New Moon, brought in $709,827,462! I'm sure this movie was more popular because girls saw the commercials, saw that Taylor Lautner takes off his shirt so the 'stupid vampire movie' was worth putting up with for that. The third movie, Eclipse, made $698,491,347 so, pretty much the same amount of sales. The few sales that were lost were probably those girls that couldn't stand sitting through the movie just to see the werewolf take off his shirt. I'm not saying that the Twilight series aren't good quality stories because I think they're amazing but for the movies, I think the second and third ones were so much more popular than the first only because a nice looking guy takes off his shirt a couple times, and not because it's a good quality story.

T.D: Negative publicity is necessary for popularity because even so it means that it is well known, and sometimes things are popular for being disliked, for instance Rebecca Black who is popular for creating an annoying song everyone hated so much they watched it to make fun of it. It ended up being mocked on Saturday Night Live which is, to a lot of people, the definition of well known. Negative popularity can sometimes hurt people. Rebecca was probably hurt by some of the comments her videos received, but again it probably made her much stronger. It really depends on your opinion of good and varies from case to case. Sometimes the things that should be popular aren't because they depict a message that is hard to hear, but one that also must be heard. For instance George Orwell's Animal Farm, which was rejected by dozens of publishing companies before it was finally accepted, has now become a classic. At the time it went unpublished because it said things that would offend people of power, but if it had been published it could have had a huge effect on people. It really can't be classified as either good or bad, because it varies from case to case and every person has a different opinion on what they think is well known.

(By the way Rebecca Black's "Friday" song (as of today) now has 4,371,406 hits,
the acoustic version has6,563,251 hits and
her "It's not the worst song in the world" interview posted by ABC has 4,552,218 hits.......)

POPULAR? ENDURING?

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The ultimate version of popularity for any story is to be considered a classic.

To be deemed a classic a story must withstand the test of time. Thus, its popularity is able to transcend time and impact many generations of people long after its original date of publication.

How about the novel you are reading right now or have just finished: Is it popular? Is it good? Could it be considered a classic to future generations?

THIS WEEK'S POST:

FIRST : Define CLASSIC.
(What qualities are necessary to ensure that a story endures? ) Make sure to record the source of your information if you borrow from another. (title, author page) or (link).)

THEN ANSWER THE FOLLOWING:
How is the novel you are reading right now (or have just finished reading) a classic? or What qualities of a classic does your novel have? and Why should future generations of students read this book?

If you believe your story is not worthy to be called a classic, explain specifically what it is missing. Why will this book not live on to be read by future generations?