. . . by the young people today? I need to include pictures of (American) celebrities that my students will recognize in a Spanish assignment. I discovered, however, that I'm hopelessly behind on who is considered a celebrity nowadays. I don't want to be one of those frumpy profs who hands out pictures of people that used to be famous 30 years ago and expects students who weren't even born then to recognize them.
So who is visually recognizable to 18-20 year olds? Please help!
27 comments:
Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, the kids from Glee? They'd know Natalie Portman and like... Leonardo Dicaprio and stuff though, right? Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson?
I have no idea who these people are (besides Portman and Dicaprio), so they must be perfect for my purposes. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do they still watch American idol?
God, I'm old.
I was going to say Justin Bieber and maybe Lea Michelle or whatever (she's on glee). Surely they would know Emma Watson or Daniel Radcliffe as well. I guess I'm not adding anything. :)
Lady Gaga.
Thank you, guys. Tomorrow I will tell you whether we are collectively young enough to understand how my students think.
Beyonce.
I think the least recognizable of those celebrities mentioned would be anyone from Glee. While I know it's a really popular show, there are still a large number of people who don't watch it.
I barely know what Glee is. I know there is a lot of singing there, but that's about it.
Now I'm trying to find photos of Beyonce and Britney Spears that are decent enough to show to students but still recognizable. It's very difficult.
I always ask my elementary Spanish student what is their favorite song and why. They always come up with songs I have absolutely never heard of before.
I thought my students would like "indie music," but no! My students and I belong to diferent demographic ranges.
I think I told you this before, but I want to bring back this anectode. When I had to teach English as a foreign language (sigh...) in 2003 the textbook we used was so outdated that my students had to listen to Cindy Lauper and Corey Hart as the next big thing in pop music.
Ol.
Taylor Swift, Robert Pattinson
I don't know these people either. I feel very old now. :-) On the other hand, I have no idea who Corey Hart is, so maybe I'm not that ancient. :-)
Taylor Swift is some sort of country pop star. Very clean image.
Robert Pattinson plays the protagonist in the "Twilight" movie series. He plays a vampire, and looks like one. Now, if you do not know about the "Twilight" series, I suggest that you pick up one of the books. A vampire story written by a Mormon author where all the characters are sexually repressed and do not have sex. Biggest literary hit since the "Harry Potter" series. It explains quite a bit about America.
I never read the Twilight series. But I read dozens (and maybe even hundreds) of comments of the teenage fans on Amazon. Scary shit! On the one hand, it's good they are reading. But on the other hand, they are reading such horrible crap...
A country pop star is someone they should definitely know. Thank you!
Eminem.
Yes, the "Harry Potter" series was much better for teenagers. I reminded me of the times when all I could read were Emilio Salgari's books (which I discovered to my great horror that only a few of them had been translated into English, and only in the past 15 years).
By the way, who were the celebrities that you showed them and they did not recognize?
Michelle Obama, Ricky Martin and Jennifer Aniston turned out to be impoSsible for the class to identify.
Michelle Obama??? They could not identify her? I can understand the other two, you are ten years late. But Michelle Obama I would have never suspected.
One group of students identified her as Oprah. I was shocked too.
Weird about Jennifer Aniston. I'm 18 in England and I and I think most of my peer group would know her. But Friends is repeated endlessly here, so perhaps no surprise.
I admit I have no idea who Corey Hart, Ricky Martin or Jennifer Hudson is though. People in their mid to late twenties might know them.
As for the Obama/Oprah thing, from personal experience and from what other people have told me I have a suspiion it is because they are both black. Black people who look nothing like each other routinely get told how they look alike.
Thank you, everybody, for your advice! FINALLY my students recognized every single celebrity. Yay for blogging!!!
FYI
Corey Hart was a Montreal pop singer who had some success in the mid 1980s. "Never Surrender" is probably is most famous hit.
Hart's female counterpart was Luba, a Montreal singer of Ukranian decent. The second most famous Ukranian Montrealer after the genious creator of this blog.
Ol
RE your "Do you want me to read a book from the Twilight series and post a review?"
I tried to read the first Twilight book, but left after several pages. The quality & style of writing were too bad & boring. Imo, the book isn't worth 0.5$ and not even half an hour of one's time.
I've been a HP fan and would want you to read the third or second book in HP series. (1st begins very slowly, it takes forever to reach the magical world and imo is boring prior to that). HP was both more popular than Twilight as a worldwide phenomenon (if you're interested in the books due to popularity among teens) and much higher quality. Imo, first 4 HP books were great children books, but in book 5 JKR bit off more than she could chew, trying to deal with RL topics of racism, totalitarianism and evil bureaucracy. Anyway, HP books had a mesmerizing effect, especially the first 4 ones. I met many interesting intelligent adult people through HP fandom, who wrote numerous great essays analyzing the books. They too loved first books, but were disappointed in the end. None of them are interested to write 1 word about Twilight.
Forgot to mention:
I've recently read Irène Némirovsky's "All Our Worldly Goods" (I think it's "
Les Biens de ce monde" in French) and loved it best of all. (Read all her translated into English works). I think you would love it too and may be find another author, whose books you can't put down.
That would be nice, el. I'd like to have one from each series. You can see my email in the right-side column.
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