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.