life

CHILDREN: Economic Lessons for Young Viewers

Article Images: 

MediaValues

This article originally appeared in Issue# 47
Body: 

Young children form many of their ideas about the outside world from television. And what they're seeing is a world in which money rarely changes hands and few financial transactions are completed. At the same time, the advertisements that saturate children's shows seldom mention that the toys and candy cost anything. The following tips can help parents and teachers structure economic learning experiences from television:

  • When a character acquires goods or services without paying for them, point out the discrepancy. Young viewers might want to guess the cost of items or services they see.



  • To put advertising in proportion, encourage children to make notes about toys, games or other products they find appealing. Compare brands and check prices at a local store. Then help children put prices in context by matching them with family necessities like bread, milk or clothing.



  • Consider allowances for children who are old enough to be interested in money. How do their favorite young TV characters get money? Can their families afford their clothes, games and toys?
 
Author Bio: 

Judith Myers-Walls, PhD is associate professor of child development at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Media Literacy Questionnaire for English Language Learners
Body: 

The purpose of this questionnaire is to get you thinking about the media and its influence on you and on society in general. Please answer the following questions as honestly and completely as possible.

  1. What is your favorite media? How much time do you spend with it each day? each week?

  2. Please describe the different kind of media that you know about. Which one do you think is the most powerful? Why?

  3. The average U.S. teenager watches about four hours of television every day. What do you think is the impact of this? Disadvantages? Advantages? How much television do you watch?

  4. Describe the various media in your home country — newspapers? television? cable? magazines? How many originate inside your country? come from outside? How do citizens of your country feel about various media? 

  5. Briefly, compare the media in your country to the media in the U.S. How are they similar / different? Why do you think this is the case?

  6. Now invent your own question about the media and answer it.

    7.  


     

 

 
Author Bio: 

Arnie Cooper is a freelance writer and instructor in the International Programs at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Teaching Media Literacy in the ESL Classroom

Citation: 

This article first appeared in Language magazine, April, 2002.
Sub Head: 

A veteran language teacher outlines why it's important and strategies that work.

Body: 

Both ESL theory and classroom practice point to an understanding of the target culture as a necessary element in second language learners' ability to master English. In this country, nothing offers a clearer window into our culture than the media. From Hollywood's entertainment and music industry to AOL/Time Warner's CNN, America's pervasive media not only reflects our value system but also influences our society on many levels.

In so doing, it provides an excellent springboard for a broad spectrum of skill building activities for English language learners. Indeed, many ESL publishers have seized upon this notion by incorporating authentic materials from newspapers, magazines and other media sources. All of this, of course, has been enhanced by the proliferation of the Internet. Now with a couple of clicks, teachers can challenge their students with the latest news article or video clip from a vast array of sources in this country and abroad.

Clearly, using news reports, movies, TV documentaries or radio talk shows can give students a deeper understanding of U.S. perspectives and lifestyles. And certainly the field of advertising provides a rich forum for further cultural explorations. But is it enough to simply use examples from the media to explore US values?

The answer may lie in a burgeoning new discipline blossoming in high schools and universities throughout the United States. Known as Media Literacy, this fast growing field can also be tapped into by ESL practitioners wishing to develop curricula and lessons for second language learners.

What is Media Literacy?

To get a clearer understanding of media literacy, I spoke to Elizabeth Thoman, founder and president of the Center for Media Literacy. Thoman, who has worked in this field for over twenty years, defines media literacy as "the ability to interpret and create personal meaning from the hundreds, even thousands of verbal and visual symbols we take in everyday through television, radio, computers, newspapers and magazines, and of course advertising." Says, Thoman, "It's the ability to choose and select, the ability to challenge and question, the ability to be conscious about what's going on around you and not be passive and therefore, vulnerable."

In the old days of four or five TV stations broadcasting just part of the day, people got most of their information through books. The focus was, therefore, on learning to read print — which came to be called "literacy." Now, thanks to cable television, satellite networks and video streaming on the web, viewers are bombarded by a blinding array of verbal and visual messages.

Indeed, a simple calculation reveals that the typical teenager who watches four hours of TV a day also views over 30,000 commercials a year. This has created an urgent need to become "literate" about visual media. Indeed, as Ernest Boyer, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching states: "It is no longer enough to simply read and write. Students must also become literate in the understanding of visual images. Our children must learn how to spot a stereotype, isolate a social cliche, and distinguish facts from propaganda, analysis from banter and important news from coverage."

Never in human history has so much information been so easily accessible. But today's bottomless pit of media programming is a double-edged sword for educators. On one hand, we enjoy a wealth of resources at our fingertips. Unfortunately, however, using them in the classroom can be a daunting experience, especially when combined with the task of making this information understandable to foreign speakers.

No doubt virtually every international student who comes to the U.S. now has access to hundreds of TV channels, thousands of newspapers and magazines on every conceivable topic. While this abundance of information creates a host of language learning opportunities, it has become harder for ESL learners to discriminate.

Says Thoman, "International students have not always experienced the commercial underpinning or consumer driven culture that we have. They don't understand the tradeoffs involved with commercial media." Thoman points out that foreign students need critical skills to see through the images of American culture. "Since people use the media to learn a language, they can also swallow the value system," she says.

That's more than enough reason to use a media studies approach with these learners.

So beyond helping international students master the basics, media literacy enhances critical thinking skills. And, since thinking in English is a crucial component of English learning, what better way to foster this than by having students reflect on how, for example, an ad for the latest automobile misleads or even manipulates its target market. Later, I'll provide more examples of some media literacy inspired activities. But first, let's trace media literacy's development.

A brief history

Back in the fifties, when the media was still in its infancy, the messages sent out were straightforward. Even commercials, now the realm of psychological surveys, were largely a "what you see is what you get it" phenomenon. Just compare a car advertisement today to one from five decades ago to see just how the media has evolved. Indeed its evolution has been accompanied by an increasing sophistication, as the public too has become more discerning.

Of course, media literacy did not spring up immediately. There was a lag time of about twenty years. Says Gary Ferrington, Director of the Media Literacy Online Project, it was during the 1970's that Media Literacy began as an educational practice. "During that decade, educators recognized that non-print media employed unique visual and aural language frameworks to encoded information. The ability to read the "text" of a motion picture, television program, advertisement, or photograph, for example, became important in an in expanding definition of literacy."

Unfortunately, by the 1980's, economic and political changes moved media literacy programs to the back burner in this country. At the same, Ferrington notes, media education programs expanded in other countries such as England, Scotland, Norway, Canada, and Australia.

Now as we clear the threshold into the 21st century, things are changing-and quickly. Thoman says there's been an exponential rise in interest in media literacy during the past two years. She attributes this to the growth of the Internet as well as news events such as the 2000 presidential election, the Columbine tragedy and the Clinton scandal.

And while ESL programs have been slow to follow, it is no less critical for second language learners to grasp these concepts. Marni Baker Stein is the Coordinator of Distributed Learning at the University of Pennsylvania's English Language Programs. She believes a media literacy approach allows instructors to situate their instruction within the larger social and cultural structures to which they belong. "This is far more effective and authentic than traditional media approaches," she says.

Indeed, ESL practitioners must empower learners to sift through the endless messages these media offer. In so doing, students will become better learners and speakers of English. They'll also become more informed citizens-of no matter what country they call home. Indeed, with so much happening in the world today, the use of the media has become especially relevant to students' lives.

Activities for the classroom

Whether instructors choose to teach media literacy explicitly will clearly depend on the level and sophistication of their learners. Low level students struggling to understand a simple text would be overwhelmed and distracted by explicit training in media literacy concepts. Still, a teacher of such students can use a media literacy framework to inform their teaching. For example, the instructor might have learners look at simple print or TV ad to distinguish between "fact" and "opinion". Another task for low level learners could involve comparing the headlines describing a particular news event from various newspapers around the country.

Of course, with advanced students a more direct approach can be taken. In my Media Literacy Class at UCSB's International Programs, I usually begin with a questionnaire to help students explore their perceptions about the media Other activities include doing contrastive analyses of specific news events by examining how different newspapers cover the same story. We also investigate how media "filters", such as how corporate, advertising and political concerns impact the type of news items highlighted by different media outlets. Another particularly empowering activity involves having learners read letters to the editor from the local newspaper. Later, students write their own letters. Usually two or three get published, demonstrating to students, firsthand, the power of the written word. A trip to the local television station to watch a live newscast is especially enlightening as learners see for themselves how the news appears from inside a studio.

One other activity involves visiting the local bookstore to find articles in alternative magazines and present them to the class. Naturally, access to a computer lab is helpful. There students can develop both their media literacy and listening skills by downloading audio and video clips.

Final thoughts

This is just a sampling of how a media literacy approach can inform one's pedagogy. There's no limit to the kinds of activities that can be created. But as with any new discipline, educators will benefit from educating themselves first. Becoming involved with various Media Literacy organizations provide a good starting point.

No doubt, a media literacy perspective can bring one's teaching to a whole new level. But it's critical to stay focused. This approach should not be used as an excuse to bash the media. And more importantly, instructors need to understand that for everyone involved media studies should be ongoing. As Thoman says, "Media literacy is not a finite body of knowledge but rather a skill, a process, a way of thinking that, like reading comprehension, is always evolving,"

 
Author Bio: 

Arnie Cooper is a freelance writer and instructor in the International Programs at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Why I've Stopped Watching the 11 O'Clock News"

Article Images: 

Citation: 

This conference, sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of the American Jewish Committee, was held December 10, 1986.
Sub Head: 

Keynote Response: Conference on Ethics in the News Media

Body: 

Last summer I stopped watching the 11 o'clock news — on any channel. In years gone by I was a devotee of Channel 2's evening effort. That's when Connie Chung, Marcia Brandywine, Maclovio Perez and Jim Hill handled the newscast. Few of my friends around the country could believe that a major TV market would turn its 11:00 news over to not one but two women anchors, an Hispanic weatherman and a black sportscaster.

Actually I was rather proud that the then KNXT — under Van Gordon Sauter, I believe — had the guts to put that news team together — not because they were singularly unique — not one white male among them — but because they were GOOD. I got hooked on the news that year and faithfully watched it nearly every night.

But no more. Whatever happens in the world tonight will just have to reach me in the morning through National Public Radio and the L.A. Times. Granted these two channels have their own limitations but at least I can feel confident that I'll be fairly well informed on the surface facts of each day's national and local events. I don't seem to be getting that surety anymore at 11 p.m. when the lead story is an exclusive interview with the star of the TV movie that just ended at 10:59.

I'm revealing this bit of personal information not so much because I want to lambaste the dreadful decline of television news — not only in Los Angeles but almost everywhere — but rather because I want to underscore what I think is a very important concept for conferences like this to recognize: the task of Jiminy Cricket. And I want to thank Felix for so skillfully outlining the Jiminy Cricket metaphor as the voice of conscience — values — not only for the news media but indeed for all of mass media.

What I remember most about Jiminy Cricket is not that he had all the answers — or that he was a nag, but that he simply reflected back to Pinocchio the implications of his actions and behavior. He helped Pinocchio to see more clearly the reality of his experience. Seeing that, Pinocchio changed his own behavior.

What Jiminy Cricket did is what today, Ivan Ilytch and educators from South America and other Third World countries would call the "circle of praxis." In this circle, which is really an upward spiral, are four moments in the evolution of a person's consciousness:

    • awareness
    • analysis
    • reflection
    • and action.

In Brazil for example, or perhaps most recently in the Philippines, whether on is learning to read a labor contract, organizing a community for better housing or responding to a fraudulent national election, the questions are basically the same:

First, begin at the beginning: What I know best, my experience, my world, whether large or small. Begin with that and then ask:

    • Awareness: What's happening here? What's going on? What are the facts of the situation?
    • Analysis: Putting 2 and 2 together...looking at a situation for:
      • the political background?
      • the economic connections?
      • the cultural
      • social
      • historical
      • legal background...and ramifications.

After making these connections, it's time for:

    • Reflection: What ought to be happening? What is right and just — and fair — in this situation?

      In doing theological or ethical reflection, it's important to remember those who have gone before us and the traditions that have developed civilizations over the centuries:

      • the wisdom of our elders?
      • the ethical imperative?
      • human courtesy and civility?
      • religious tradition and Scripture?

      Of course we must also keep in mind that these traditions can also be co-opted — for example, patriarchy has led to sexism in almost all religious traditions...but that's another whole conference!

Finally,

    • Action: How might things be different? — And what can I (or we) do to change things?

      Social problems, as you may know, are generally not caused by people but by the failure of social systems to respond quickly enough to the changing needs of any population.

Now what does all this have to do with media or even the news? Well, I propose that the method of analysis I've just described is a method for helping us here today — as well as for gathering of concerned people in church basements or community centers or school auditoriums everywhere. It's a method to help us cope with the issues facing us in our increasingly mediated society.

It is indeed the method underlying the editorial philosophy and direction for Media&Values magazine. It may not be obvious to the casual reader who flips through it in 30 seconds but on a closer examination you'll see how each article is crafted and placed to take the reader alone or as part of a group around the circle of praxis on a specific problem in today's media experience:

    • Sexual violence in the media
    • The role of rock music in the lives of the young
    • How media has affected sports and leisure
    • The growing amount of militarism in the media
    • Even fairness in the news!

The point is to help our readers, and through them the families and young people they influence:

    • To become AWARE of the media in their lives;
    • To ANALYZE as thoroughly as possible this influence;
    • To REFLECT deeply on what is right, what is fair, what is just;
    • And to DO something positive — at least personally and perhaps collectively.

Like the Jiminy Cricket analogy, this method operates on both a macro and micro level. With a micro lens, I can learn to focus on my OWN experience: thus my initial story about the 11:00 news:

    • I became AWARE that the 11 o'clock news was frustrating my need for substantive information about current events.
    • I began to ANALYZE what had changed and why:
      • more stories about Hollywood
      • less about the real world
      • more features
      • less facts

(Now I did this myself but obviously leading individuals or groups in this kind of analysis is the function of teachers, religious leaders, social workers — and in some ways, even magazines!)

I REFLECTED — what ought to be happening?

I'm not going to go proof-texting to find some obscure Scripture verse to justify my position or motivate my search with an easy bromide. That's not what theological or ethical reflection is all about. As an intelligent woman, I don't need a Scripture verse to tell me that

    • when people are dying in El Salvador or Ethiopia,
    • when 50% of minority youngsters can't find employment except as drug runners,
    • when indeed the very nature of my city is changing in dramatic ways as Felix noted for us, I'm certain that my local TV news should not waste 4 of its precious 23 minutes for the latest in a 5-part series on women's lingerie.

Finally, I ACTED. I made a conscious choice to avoid the 11 pm news whenever possible. It only makes me mad. But at the same time I made several other conscious choices

    • To watch MacNeil-Lehrer whenever possible,
    • To set my clock radio to NPR's Morning Edition,
    • And to subscribe to In These Times as well as the L.A. Times.

Now the method also works on the macro level, say when a number of people — a class, a conference like this, an ongoing study group in a church or synagogue — pool their collective experiences and use the method to plan constructive change in their neighborhood, community or city. As we've seen in Latin America, analyzing community experience in such a fashion can lead to revolution!

Well, perhaps what is needed in our mediated society is a new media revolution. We already have a technological revolution underway — symbolized by the pin I'm wearing on my lapel — it's a working model of a computer circuit that demonstrates the miniaturization of technology. What we need now in the 1980's is a revolution in media consciousness and media awareness.

The very fact that we're holding this conference today tells me that to thoughtful people, mass media is as much an issue of justice in our society as housing, health, civil rights or even nuclear disarmament. Like those other issues, there is no quick-fix band-aid solutions. What is needed is a method of analysis that leads ultimately to change — individually, collectively, socially.

I believe that what we have heard this morning begins our awareness and analysis. What we need this afternoon is reflection and action.

 
Author Bio: 

Elizabeth Thoman, a pioneering leader in the U.S. media literacy field, founded Media&Values magazine in 1977 and the Center for Media Literacy in 1989. She is a graduate of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and continues her leadership through this website, consulting, speaking and as a founding board member of the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA).

Insider's Game: Talking Politics on TV

Article Images: 

Citation: 

From By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate, by David Croteau and William Hoynes. Common Courage Press, 1994. Edited for Connect Newletter and reprinted with permission.
Sub Head: 

How political talk on TV is staged as an "insider's debate" open to the privileged few whose differences are often as narrow as a dime.

Body: 

Absence of diversity has substantial consequences for the way the news depicts the political world. Politics, according to most major news media, is not about broad questions of power — who wields it, in what arenas, under what circumstances, with what consequences — nor is it a forum for wide-ranging debate and controversy about current events.

Instead, politics is framed as an insider's debate, where only a privileged few are invited to the table. Journalists are not unaware of the choices they make; they define news in such a way that such narrow debates become inevitable.

Too often, discussion is not about the substance of a policy but the likelihood of it being passed or defeated. Viewers are often left with the impression that the most important consequence of policy decisions is their impact on the careers of politicians and pundits. This Washington "beltway" mentality trivializes the true significance of policy changes for the citizens and communities impacted by the decision.

It is a political act for the media to ask "who won the week?" That's because, as Jay Rosen notes, a sports-like perspective on political winners and losers, "telescopes our vision downward; it sets a rhythm to politics that permits the media to play timekeeper, umpire, and finally, judge. The question would not occur to an ordinary citizen, but it remains a favorite of pundits and reporters because it appears to place the press on the outside of a process — the shaping of perceptions — that is profoundly affected by what the press itself does."

"By speaking of politics as a weekly contest of winners and losers" Rosen continues, "journalists thus avoid any conscious reckoning with their own influence on politics. They avoid, as well, their troublesome need for a more productive political vision, a way of looking at the world that will render it meaningful for others."

The "insider" nature of the discussions on public affairs programs means that the same analysts appear repeatedly regardless of the wisdom of their previous commentary or prior actions when they occupied positions of power.

To be — or to have been — an insider, with access to powerful circles, makes one a de facto "expert" on most public affairs programs. Thus a troubling dynamic develops: individuals are qualified to comment and analyze insofar as they are or have been "insiders." The resulting "debates" that are orchestrated, therefore, are often between "insiders" who share a common commitment to traditional politics, to the exclusion of those outside the halls of power.

On the rare occasions that those from outside of elite circles do appear in the news media, they are clearly labeled as political partisans. Citizen activists or journalists for alternative publications are not afforded the status of "expert;" instead they are identified as representatives of a particular political position.

Ultimately, attachment to what journalists consider mainstream institutions is a badge of neutrality; those who are connected to institutions outside of the traditional mainstream may merit inclusion under specific circumstances, but the assumption is that these outsiders to the game of politics do not really know the rules of insider politics and have a special agenda that they are pursuing.

...depiction of the political world as a game carries with it a clear message about the rules of the game: insider's are the players and only players can win.

As a result, spokespeople from beyond the boundaries of the consensus are routinely identified in subtle and not-so-subtle ways as individuals who have an axe to grind.

The insider nature of many discussions on television also means that apparent disagreements are often less than meet the eye. The two sides in a television debate, therefore, often agree on more than they disagree. When insiders who share a general policy orientation meet to debate and discuss the finer points of that policy, the result can often be a compelling illusion of political balance.

Contrasting perspectives, then, are frequently the differences, generally quite narrow, between establishment insiders. This reportorial strategy does little to inform the public of positions outside of this limited range of opinion; indeed it implicitly denies that other positions should be taken seriously.

Ultimately, the depiction of the political world as a game carries with it a clear message about the rules of the game: insider's are the players and only players can win.

When government officials appear on the news to defend their policies or to criticize their opponents, seldom do interviewers ask questions that fall outside of the general consensus: perhaps specific policies are questioned but fundamental assumptions are left unchallenged.

In short, the news often becomes, in its zeal for official voices, little more than a press agency for U.S. officials.

[We] want to broaden [this] argument to include the importance of credentials. That is, those with the proper institutional credentials — particularly other journalists, prominent academics, and medical and legal "experts" — can often become regular participants in these discussions.

What is significant is who is excluded: those who lack power and the appropriate credentials are generally not worthy of consideration. This is one of the reasons why citizen activists are so regularly excluded; they lack power and often have the "wrong" credentials.

Instead of members of various communities providing their interpretations of events and policies, public affairs programs turn to pundits who treat viewers to their insight into what Americans are thinking, often reducing public attitudes to straightforward expressions of frustration, pride, or cynicism.

If the media are not performing their job as watchdogs for democracy, if they are not providing a forum for the public debate of widely diverse views, whose views do they transmit? To answer this question it is important to see who is allowed into the media spotlight — and who is left in the dark.

 
Author Bio: 

David Croteau is a former associate professor (retired) in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of Politics and the Class Divide. William Hoynes is Professor of Sociology at Vassar College and the author of Public Television for Sale. Croteau and Hoynes are co-authors of By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate; Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences; and The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest. Most recently, they are co-editors, with Charlotte Ryan, of Rhyming Hope and History:Activists, Academics and Social Movement Scholarship.

How to Conduct a 'Close Analysis' of a Media 'Text'

Article Images: 
Sub Head: 

A basic media literacy exercise.

By Line: 

By Elizabeth Thoman

Body: 

While getting "caught up" in a storytelling experience has been the essence of entertainment since our ancestors told tales around the fire, the relentless pace of entertainment media today requires that at least once in awhile, we should stop and look, really look, at how a media message is put together and the many interpretations that can derive from it. The method for this is called "close analysis." To learn to conduct this basic media literacy exercise, try it first yourself; then introduce it to a group or class using tips at the end of this article.

Any media message can be used for a close analysis but commercials are often good choices because they are short and tightly packed with powerful words and images, music and sounds. Find a commercial to analyze by recording, not the programs but just the commercials, during an hour or two of TV watching. Play the tape and look for a commercial that seems to have a lot of layers-- interesting visuals and sound track, memorable words or taglines, multiple messages that call out for exploration. Replay your selection several times as you go through the following steps:

1. Visuals.

After the first viewing, write down everything you can remember about the visuals-- lighting, camera angles, how the pictures are edited together. Describe any people-- what do they look like? what are they doing? wearing? What scenes or images do you remember clearly? Focus only on what is actually on the screen, not your interpretation of what you saw on the screen. (See the following sample exercise, What Do You Notice? ) If necessary, play it again but with the sound off. Keep adding to your list of visuals.

2. Sounds.

Replay again with the picture off. Listen to the sound track. Write down all the words that are spoken. Who says them? What kind of music is used? Does it change in the course of the commercial? How? Are there other sounds? What is their purpose? Who is being spoken to-- directly or indirectly? (That is, who is the audience addressed by the commercial?)

3. Apply Key Questions.

With the third viewing, begin to apply the Five Key Questions and the Guiding Questions that lead to them. Identify the author(s) and how the specific "construction" techniques you identified in steps 1 and 2 influence what the commercial is "saying"-- values expressed and unexpressed; lifestyles endorsed or rejected; points of view proposed or assumed. Explore what's left out of the message and how different people might react differently to it. What is the message "selling"? Is it the same as the product being advertised? Continue to show the text over and over; it's like peeling back the layers of an onion.

4. Review Your Insights.

Summarize how the text is constructed and how various elements of the construction trigger our own unique response-- which may be very different than how others interpret the text. Try this exercise with other kinds of messages-- a story from a newscast, a key scene from a movie, a print advertisement, a website. Are different questions important for different kinds of messages?

Doing a close analysis with a class or group can be exhilirating, with insights coming fast and furiously. After the first showing, start the group exercise with the simple question: " What did you notice?" Different people will remember different things so accept all answers and keep asking, " What else did you notice ?"

If the group is having a hard time, show the clip again and invite them to look for something that stands out for them. Continue the brainstorming until you have at least 15 or 20 answers to the question: " What did you notice ?" Challenge any attempt to assign interpretation too early. Keep the group focused on identifying only what was actually on screen or heard on the soundtrack. The key to success with this exercise is for the teacher/leader to keep asking questions . Refrain from contributing too many answers yourself.

While no one has the time to subject every media message to this kind of analysis, it takes only two or three experiences with close analysis to give us the insight to "see" through other media messages as we encounter them. It's like having a new set of glasses that brings the whole media world into focus.

 

What Did You Notice?
A sample inquiry into visual language .

Media Text: A :60 commercial showing an attractive middle-aged woman driving on a dark, lonely road when her car breaks down. She tries in vain to restart the car. . .a truck passes going the other way but does not stop. (Turns out to be a commercial for a cell phone.)

Teacher/Leader: What did you notice about this text? First, what did you actually see on the screen?

Group Responses: driving on a lonely road. . . it's night / dark . . . woman alone . . . car breaks down . . . she's afraid. . .

T/L: Oh?, you saw fear?! How did you see fear? Fear is an abstract concept . . . what did you actually see (that led you to conclude : fear)?

(You might want to chart the following typical responses in two columns which can later clarify: denotation / connotation)

GR: Closeup of woman turning key in ignition with sound of car grinding but not starting. . . close-up of foot on gas pedal. . . close-up of engine light. . . close-up of her fingers drumming on the steering wheel. . . closeup of her looking out the window to see if anyone around. . . no . . . on the sound track, the music is in a minor key, kind of eerie.

T/L: Okay! After the establishing shot which put her on a dark country road, there were four quick cuts showing her trying to start the car. Put those together with the eerie music and we viewers jump to the conclusion that she's afraid-- or that she should be afraid. . .

Further exploration reveals that each shot of the commercial, plus the editing which goes faster and faster like a racing heartbeat, is carefully constructed to build the case that the woman is in danger and afraid. If we, as viewers, buy into it and begin to identify with a feeling of fear, we've been "hooked" by the commercial's premise, whether we ever buy a cell phone or not. This is the power of visual language and why we need to help our students learn to "read" it.

 

Making Media Skills

Citation: 

This article was published with permission from the June 2003 issue of Cable in the Classroom magazine.
Sub Head: 

The critical connection betwen media production, media literacy and education.

By Line: 

By Terry Payne Butler

Body: 

Summary: Three video-production teachers explain why the analytical and critical thinking skills of media literacy go hand in hand with student media production.

 

What I've Learned from Making Video - A Student Speaks

Citation: 

From "Taking the High Road: Recollections of a Media Literacy Teacher" in Telemedium, The Journal of Media Literacy, Fall, 2002.
Body: 

"Not only have we learned how to use the equipment, how to work together, and how to create something worthwhile for television, we've learned how to put it all together, too. We've learned how to watch television as well. We're paying more attention now to what we see. We know what to look for, because we have inside information. We're thinking more about what's on television, and making more intelligent decisions about what we want to spend our time watching. Most of all, after doing this kind of work ourselves, we have a lot more respect for what we view, and for the people who do it professionally. We understand what goes into every minute we see on television. Knowing what happens behind the scenes doesn't diminish the magic of television, however; if anything, it increases the wonder of what we see."


— Steve Dast, Advanced Media Class, West High School, Madison, WI

 

The Bribed Soul: Ads, TV and American Culture

Article Images: 

Citation: 

From the introduction to the author's best-selling book, The Sponsored Life. Posted with permission of the author.
Sub Head: 

How advertising transforms both our experience and identity into a "sponsored life."

Body: 

Television-watching Americans — that is, just about all Americans — see approximately 100 TV commercials a day. In that same 24 hours they also see a host of print ads, billboard signs, and other corporate messages slapped onto every available surface, from the fuselages of NASA rockets right down to the bottom of golf holes and the inside doors of restroom stalls. Studies estimate that, counting all the logos, labels and announcements, some 16,000 ads flicker across an individual's consciousness daily.

Advertising now infects just about every organ of society, and wherever advertising gains a foothold it tends to slowly take over, like a vampire or a virus. When television broadcasting began about 50 years ago, the idea of network that would air nothing but commercials was never seriously considered, not even when single-sponsor shows were produced straight out of the sponsor's ad agency.

But today, by the grace of cable, we have several such channels, including MTV and FYI, a proposed new channel that would run only ads. Similarly, product placement in the movies started small, with occasional Tab showing up in a star's hand, but now it's grown big enough to eat the whole thing. In its 1993 futuristic thriller Demolition Man, Warner Bros. not only scattered the usual corporate logos throughout the sets but also rewrote the script so that the only fast-food chain to survive the "franchise wars" of the 20th century was Taco Bell — which, in return, promoted the movie in all its outlets.

From the cradle to the rocking chair, American life marches to the steady beat of commercialism.

Even older, far statelier cultural institutions have had their original values hollowed out and replaced by ad values, leaving behind the merest fossil of their founders' purpose. Modernist masters enjoy art museum blockbusters only when they can be prominently underwritten by an oil company or telecommunications giant; new magazines are conceived, not on the basis of their editorial content but on their ability to identify potential advertiser and groom their copy to fit marketing needs.

As for all those television-watching Americans, hit on by those 16,000 paid (and tax-deductible) messages a day, they're even more vulnerable than their institutions. Most admakers understand that in order to sell to you they have to know your desires and dreams better than you may know them yourself, and they've tried to reduce that understanding to a science.

Market research, in which psychologists, polling organizations, trends analysts, focus group leaders, "mall-intercept" interviewers, and the whole panoply of mass communications try to figure out what will make you buy, has become a $2.5 billion annual business growing at a healthy clip of about 4.2 percent a year (after adjustment for inflation).

Yet even this sophisticated program for the study of the individual consumer is only a starter kit for the technological advances that will sweep through the advertising-industrial complex in the 1990s. Today, the most we can do when another TV commercial comes on — and we are repeatedly told that this is our great freedom — is to switch channels. But soon technology will take even that tiny tantrum of resistance and make it "interactive," providing advertisers with information on the exact moment we became bored — vital data that can be crunched, analyzed, and processed into the next set of ads, the better to zap-proof them.

Impressive as such research may be, the real master work of advertising is the way it uses the techniques of art to seduce the human soul. Virtually all of modern experience now has a sponsor, or at least a sponsored accessory, and there is no human emotion or concern — love, lust, war, childhood innocence, social rebellion, spiritual enlightenment, even disgust with advertising — that cannot be reworked into a sales pitch. The transcendent look in a bride's eyes the moment before she kisses her groom turns into a promo for Du Pont. The teeth gnashing humiliation of an office rival becomes an inducement to switch to AT&T.

In short, we're living the sponsored life. From Huggies to Maalox, the necessities and little luxuries of an American's passage through this world are provided and promoted by one advertiser or another. The sponsored life is born when commercial culture sells our own experiences back to us. It grows as those experiences are then reconstituted inside us, mixing the most intimate processes of individual thought with commercial values, rhythms, and expectations.

There is no human emotion or concern — love, lust, war, childhood innocence, social rebellion, spiritual enlightenment, even disgust with advertising — that cannot be reworked into a sales pitch.

It has often been said by television's critics that TV doesn't deliver products to viewers but that viewers themselves are the real product, one that TV delivers to its advertisers. True, but the symbiotic relationship between advertising and audience goes deeper than that. The viewer who lives the sponsored life — and this is most of us to one degree or the other — is slowly re-created in the ad's image.

Inside each "consumer," advertising's all-you-can-eat, all-the-time, all-dessert buffet produces a build-up of mass-produced stimuli, all hissing and sputtering to get out. Sometimes they burst out as sponsored speech, as when we talk in the cadences of sitcom one-liners, imitate Letterman, laugh uproariously at lines like "I've fallen and I can't get up," or mouth the words of familiar commercials, like the entranced high school student I meet in a communications class who moved his lips with the voiceover of a Toyota spot.

Sometimes they slip out as sponsored dress, as when white suburban kids don the baggy pants and backward baseball caps they see on MTV rappers. Sometimes they simply come out as sponsor equations, as when we attribute "purity" and "honesty" to clear products like Crystal Pepsi or Ban's clear deodorant.

To lead the sponsored life you don't really have to do anything. You don't need to have a corporate sponsor as the museums or the movies do. You don't even have to buy anything — though it helps, and you will. You just have to live in America and share with the nation, or at least with your mall-intercept cohorts, certain paid-for expectations and values, rhythms and reflexes.

The chief expectation of the sponsored life is that there will and always should be regular blips of excitement and resolution, the frequency of which is determined by money. We begin to pulse to the beat, the one-two beat, that moves most ads: problem/solution, old/new, BrandX/Hero brand, desire/gratification.

In order to dance to the rhythm, we adjust other expectations a little here, a little there: our notions of what's desirable behavior, our lust for novelty, even our vision of the perfect love affair or thrilling adventure adapt to the mass consensus coaxed out by marketing. Cultural forms that don't fit these patterns tend to fade away, and eventually everything in commercial culture comes to share the same insipid insistence on canned excitement and neat resolution.

What's all the excitement about? Anything and nothing. You know you've entered the commercial zone when the excitement building in you is oddly incommensurate with the content dangled before you…through the sympathetic magic of materialism we learn how to respond to excitement: It's less important that we purchase any particular product than that we come to expect resolution in the form of something buyable.

Commercials are the tinny jingles in our heads that remind us of all we've abandoned in exchange for our materially comfortable lives — real extended families, real human empathy, real rebel prowess.

 
Author Bio: 

For 13 years, Leslie Savan wrote a column about advertising and commericial culture for The Village Voice and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1991, 1992 and 1997. Her writing has appeared in Time, The New Yorker, The New York Times and Salon and she has been a commentator for National Public Radio.

Pages