Last week I gave a little introduction to media criticism and how important it is for making sense of our modern world. Today, I want to show you what it can really do. Ready?
The Kid’s Got A Gun!
The following photo is from a campaign by the gun control group Moms Demand Action. Moms Demand Action was founded in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings and lobbies “for gun sense in America”.
In our example, we have two children sitting cross-legged on the floor of a school library. The kids display a longing expression. The girl on the left holds the book Little Red Riding Hood. The girl on the right holds a semi-automatic rifle, commonly referred to as an “assault weapon”. Text above the girls invites the reader to guess which item is banned in America.
Media criticism is not just one method, but rather uses a variety of methods. You can interpret a text through its narrative, its structure, or its genre, among other methods. For this post, I’ll be using semiotics. Semiotics uses signs and symbols to identify meaning. The meaning of signs is unstable and can vary with time, place, context, or the person. Everyone has a different value system, so signs can be interpreted in multiple ways. This site is a great explanation of semiotic concepts.
The little girls denote innocence and purity. A parent’s natural instinct is to keep his or her offspring safe. A parent would naturally freak out if they caught their child with a deadly weapon. The choice of a Caucasian and African-American girl is meant to illustrate that school gun violence is a threat to kids of all races and nationalities. The bookshelves and the American flag in the background paint this as an issue for schools around the country. This photo could have been taken at any elementary school in America. The kids and the background work to create a paradigm. We see the kids and the setting and immediately think “school”.
“Assault weapon” is a loaded phrase in American politics. Pro gun groups claim the phrase is a misnomer and that those types of guns are no more dangerous than manual rifles. Gun control people want to see these types of guns banned. The ridiculous juxtaposition of the rifle and the little girl make it obvious which side of the debate this ad is on.
The order the kids are presented is important, too. This is what semioticians call the syntagmatic relationship. Most Americans scan a page left to right. Your eyes will rest first on the girl with the book, and think “is that really banned?” Then you’ll see the gun, and the ad’s message will become clear to you.
Of course, that’s not the only way to interpret this ad. Some people might think the ad is about censorship and not banning books. Others may see this ad and say, “Good. Guns keep people safe.” It all depends on what the reader’s value system is.
Other ads in this series compared assault weapons to dodgeballs and Kinder Surprise, a European candy banned in the US for being a choking hazard. The other ads were set in other school settings, such as classrooms and gyms, and featured boys as well as girls.
Cool, But Why Is This Important?
So obviously, some of you will just shrug at this and say, “So what? Why should I learn about symbolism? Why should I care about any of this? It doesn’t affect me in my actual life. It’s useless. Just like math.”
Being an astute critic of media is vitally important in today’s world. Every day, you are constantly being bombarded with messages. Messages telling you to buy something or to think a certain way. If you use the Internet, watch TV, listen to the radio, or read a book or magazine, you’re picking up those messages. Heck, even if you avoid all media, you still can’t escape advertising. Ads can be found on billboards, buses, T-shirts, packages, everywhere. Last week I saw a small airplane fly a GEICO banner while I was driving.
Developing media criticism skills will help you parse the messages you get. Consider political attack ads. They’re designed to rile up the opposition and demonize the target candidate. But when you look at them closely, you can see how ridiculous they are. Political ads take candidate’s words way out of context.
This isn’t an actual candidate, but the point still stands.
When you look at what candidates really say, not just what you see in the ads, you become a more informed voter. And our democracy is better for it.
In the case of the Moms Demand Action ad, the knee-jerk reaction (and the one the group wants) would be “That’s nuts! We gotta do something about it!” But by using media criticism skills, you can see how the ad is manipulating you into eliciting a specific emotional response. And if you actually research the gun control debate, you’ll find the reality is much more nuanced.
It’s not just useful in politics. Using semiotics, you can decode the hidden messages in commercials. You don’t actually buy Old Spice because you think it’s the most effective deodorant, you buy it because of the “Smell Like A Man” messages in their ads. Semiotics is like cracking a secret code. Once you’ve mastered it, all the subliminal messages in ads will become clear to you.
“Ovaltine? A crummy commercial?”
So give that gray matter a workout and really examine media. See what makes it tick. Go to the source. And have fun!
Media Critical Hit 