Critical Approaches to Media Text

Audience/Rhetorical Analysis

Audience or rhetorical analysis is the thought that certain language, signs, and images can lead audiences to believe or think in a certain way. The audience will connect two things together that were previously not connected. For example, Sex and the City created a huge cosmopolitan martini craze. In the show, the 4 women often get together to drink cosmos. Cosmos became connected to a certain lifestyle. Women everywhere began to drink them because they were now seen as cool and symbolized that you were a free, ambitious, and interesting woman. It’s also great to use this analysis when looking at any commercial to try and figure out what the makers are really pushing. Often it is not the actual product but an idea. They are asking you “what kind of person do you want to be seen as?” and pushing a product as a symbol of that idea.

Critical Discourse Analysis

In this analysis, an identity “lens” is looked through to better understand the media. A discourse is the way that an individual perceives the world, and language is a large part of this. For example, discourses of class can be used to better understand advertising. In Argentina, many ads are in both English and Spanish. However, the majority of the population does not speak English, only the upper or upper middle class. Therefore the products in these ads are being marketed to the upper and upper middle classes, because someone from the working class would not identify with the bilingual approach that the advertisers are using.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Analysis through psychoanalysis is when the meaning of media is shaped by a person’s subconscious desires. The “male gaze” is part of this theory, which is when a passive female becomes the object of male desire. Men are the people who do the looking while females are to be looked at. Example of this “gaze” can be found in many ads on TV and in magazines. A funny reverse side of this theory is a diet coke (I think) commercial a few years ago where when were inside working and during their break they would sit by the window and cat call the construction workers that were outside, going crazy and pawing at the window. It was a funny reverse of the tired, but popular scene of construction workers calling after women who walk by.

Feminist Analysis

While feminist analysis has been changing, one of the focuses is the sexist portrayal of males and females in media, and a large part of this has to do with the cultural stereotypes that are held and applied to media. For example, tonight I was watching the movie Must Love Dogs and in it the main character perpetuates the idea that many hold of divorced women. She acts crazy and yells at the meat counter worker at a grocery store because he pushed her to buy more than she wants. She yells at him saying that she is divorced and eats by herself over the sink most nights. She acts unbalanced and emotional, stereotypes that many hold of divorced women.

Postmodern Analysis

Here, one’s views on reality are challenged and it is difficult for one to distinguish “real” from “false”. In this analysis, we try to make sense of the world in which we live. This analysis is fun to play with, thinking about what truth really is and how you can define it. I think of the movie Fight Club when thinking about this analysis where the main character, played by Edward Norton, constructs an imaginary friend that “forces” him to do things he would not ordinarily do. He believes that this person is real and in the end, we find out that he is not, that he is really part of Ed Norton’s character.

Doritos Commercial

Doritos “Live the Flavor” Super Bowl Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUFvJNQ0bnM

Shot 1: Close-up of Doritos 

Close-up shot

This shot symbolizes the importance of Doritos in this “story”

Shot 2: Shot of guy opening Doritos bag with his mouth while driving

Medium shot of guy

The shot of the guy shows that he is one of the main characters in the story

Shot 3: Girl walking holding a bag of Doritos

Zoom shot of girl walking/ point of view shot

This shot moves our attention to the other main character, and we are looking at her from the guy’s point of view

Shot 4: Still Frame of girl holding bag of Doritos and the word “spicy”

Still Frame

This shot shows us that the girl (and Doritos) symbolize “spicy”

Shot 5: Guy looks at girl and turns to still frame of him with the bag of Doritos and the word “cheesy” 

Medium shot of guy

This shot shows us that the guy (and Doritos) and considered “cheesy”

Shot 6: car hits something and guy’s face smashes into Doritos bag and steering wheel and it turns to still frame with the word “crunchy”

Tracking shot 

This shot changes the direction of the commercial, the music stops, and comic relief is added with physical humor

Shot 7: Girl sees accident and runs in front of car, worried, and turns to still frame with the word “bold”

Long shot of girl

This shot shows us that the girl (and Doritos) also embody boldness

Shot 8: Girl runs to window of car and turns to still frame with the word “smooth?”

Medium shot of girl

This is a build-up shot, we know something is about to happen because of the “?”,

Shot 9: Girl falls down outside of car window

Medium shot

This is the climax of the commercial, more comic relief

Shot 10: Guy looks out and sees girl on the ground and the slogan comes on screen “Live the Flavor”

Long shot of car and girl

The final scene where we are reminded by Doritos that if we eat them, our lives will encompass the previously mentioned adjectives.

Thinking about movies!

In the movie clip from Garden State, Sam and Andrew are in a waiting room at the hospital; Andrew is waiting for an appointment and Sam is supposedly waiting for a friend, but we find out later this is a lie. They start talking and Sam offers Andrew her headphones and asks him to listen to this song, it will “change his life”. He listens to the song for a few seconds, while staring at her, and gives the headphones back and tells her thanks. Then, they talk for a few minutes about why they are at the hospital. He is then called for his appointment, finally introduces himself, finds out her name, and leaves.


The clip uses many close-ups of the two characters and medium shots. The close-ups show the characters’ emotions and establishes their characters, since the story is about the main character Andrew finding out more about himself, through learning about Sam. The close-ups also are point-of-view shots. During the series where Andrew is listening to the song, we look at Sam through Andrew’s point-of-view, and vice versa, and it gives us a very intimate feeling, despite the fact that they are in a waiting room of a hospital.

There is a long shot when Sam is trying to get Andrew to listen to the song, and she is curled up on one of the chairs. It shows their body language and gives you the feeling that the situation is awkward because they are both tilted slightly away from each other.

When they are introducing themselves there is a low-angle and high-angle shot. The low-angle shot is used when Andrew is introducing himself and we are looking at Sam. It is used in this way because it is showing that Andrew is the dominant character and holds the power in their “relationship”. Sam has already put herself out there by initiating conversation, sustaining it with little help from Andrew, and now she is waiting for him to make the next move. The high-angle shot is used when Sam introduces herself to Andrew, showing the power dichotomy.

The music is used is a very powerful way in this clip. She is asking him to listen to it. She is sharing something of herself with this music. It gives us an opportunity to see more about her character. If she had given him hardcore punk music, or classical music, we would have assumed something different about her character. She also tells him that it will “change your life” so this song must mean something to her.


In my classroom I am planning on teaching film and editing techniques by having students contribute to a classroom paper that reviews TV programs and movies. In this classroom or online newspaper students would be involved in critiquing a TV show or movie based not only on the storyline and sequence of events, but also on the techniques that they used to convey messages. This would make students think about films and programs in a different light, but also work on their writing skills.

Since I am not a Language Arts teacher, but a licensed Social Studies teacher, I think that it would be powerful to have students connect a movie to the event on which the movie was based. The paper or project would be more meaningful when students think about the way in which certain techniques involving lighting, music, and angles are used to convey a message, and exactly which message the director wanted us to receive. Instead of just watching the movie for the historic relevance or interpretation, the students could write about what the director wanted us to think about this event, and what their interpretation is. This is a way to make movies more meaningful in social studies education.

Rational For Teaching Media Studies

Here in the Minneapolis Public School District, we are very focused on the “basics”, partly because of our commitment to closing the achievement gap and partly because we are looking to raise student achievement and prepare them to be college-ready. Here at Folwell Middle School we do not currently have a media studies class. Presently, we are focused on traditional Language Arts classes as well as Read 180, which is a class that focuses on the basics for students who have fallen behind. For next year I have proposed a Media Studies class that focuses on learning critical and creative reading and writing skills through analyzing different medias. Parents have been supportive and would like their children to be challenged in this way.

Though teaching Media Studies is often thought of as “outside” traditional language arts curriculum, it is also a subject that teaches the basics; it just happens to do so through different mediums. The following is not an exhaustive list of reasons that media studies is a valuable course, but some examples that illustrate it’s importance.

Youth are Engaging in Media Use in Higher Amounts Than Previously: The youth of today are already heavily using and interacting with many different types of media. A study done by the Kaiser Network shows that youth ages 8 to 18 have increased their overall exposure to media content per day, this is to say that the study found “the total amount of media content young people are exposed to each day has increased by more than an hour over the past five years” (Key Findings from New Research on Children's Media Use, March 9, 2005, The Kaiser Family Foundation). Because of this, it is our responsibility to teach media literacy so that our students are learning through and about activities that they already engage in outside of the classroom. We need to build upon students’ active use of media.

Moving Media from Passive to Active Participation: A big part of education is drawing on students’ experiences to lead them to new discoveries and enhance their knowledge. Since students are engaging with media at such high amounts, we need to draw on these experiences and build upon them to enhance their knowledge and use of media. Many students sit in their homes and watch TV, surf the Internet, and flip through magazines. We need to foster a move from this passive interaction to an active interaction where they are reading information on the internet and critically analyzing the validity of it, creating blogs instead of just reading them, and watching TV and movies and interpreting and analyzing the messages that they are sending. In addition, the skills learned in this class related to using blogs, wikis and websites can be applicable to courses or jobs in the future.

It is not the medium, it is the content: Through such mediums as blogs and wikis, students are working on their reading and writing skills. Students can learn creative and technical writing skills, as well as reading skills through other mediums that can be interactive and familiar to students. Teachers can create lessons that incorporate higher order thinking skills through the use of any medium. The use of new medias can make the content appear more interesting and manageable to our media-savvy youth of today. Youth are interested in “new media”, shown by the increase in use. It makes sense to teach “basic” skills to students in an interactive and interesting way that they are familiar with and that they appreciate.

These are a few reasons why creating a Media Studies class would be beneficial to our students. Again, students need to be engaged and interested in what they are studying. Students in this class will learn to analyze texts, create texts of their own through blogs and wikis, as well as analyze images through comics and movies. This class will focus on the basics, using interactive and engaging medias.