 |
||||
Media literacy is the most contemporary and modern day function of the public’s literacy. Society is constantly bombarded with messages in the forms of the television programs we watch, but more importantly the advertising in between. This focus on media literacy has been commented on by Elizabeth Thoman (Thoman, 2005), and also in the work of Kellner and Share (Kellner, 2005) in their work on Critical Literacy in relation to the media. In order to demonstrate the process and frameworks that have been developed for media literacy in these writings, I had originally planned to deconstruct some newspaper articles. However, after purchasing a McDonalds family pack I found the ‘stories to share over dinner’ on its packaging offered a far better text to deconstruct. In doing so the following five questions would form the focus of this deconstruction:
1) Who created this message and why are they sending it? 2) What techniques are being used? 3) What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in the message? 4) How might different people understand this message differently from me? 5) What is omitted from this message? The Three ‘stories to share over dinner’ on the packaging are. What celebrity does everyone in your family most look like?. If you could live with any TV family, which would it be?. What is your favourite childhood memory?. These three ‘stories’; will be both collectively and a times specifically analysed and deconstructed. 1) Who created this message and why are they sending it? Thoman in her writing outlines the issue that; all media and texts are constructed by someone for a specific reason (Thoman, 2005). Similarly Kellner et al claim that one of the core tenets of media literacy is that all texts are non-transparent (Kellner, 2005). Within the framework of media literacy we reach the first question, who created the message and why are they sending it?. This question is the easiest to answer. The message was specifically created by the designers of McDonalds packaging and advertising, with a desire to appeal to their consumers. In this case it would seem that the target demographic is the middle class family. This is based on the level of the questions with two out of the three focussing on television and pop culture with a third more deep level of question. Thoman in her writing describes the pattern that merely a few people will construct the world and this new view will become the norm or ‘the way it is’ (Thoman, 2005). In this case the text subversively makes the focus on television and pop culture ‘the way it is’ for family dinner table conversation. This distortion or imposition upon reality supports the view outlined in the writings of Kellner et al, that media not presenting the reality of the world but instead ‘representing’ reality (Kellner, 2005). After all we all know that no family is going to buy a premade meal and then sit around discussing the finer points of Jean Paul Satre and Existentialism.
2) What techniques are being used? Within the presentation of this message we must analyse the way in which the package delivers the message overall to its audience. Ideally it can be seen that the packaging is designed so only one person can view the three stories. Thus it can be imagined that this person will become the facilitator of conversation, with the job of prompting conversation using the three stories from the McDonalds packaging. The three stories are framed in three separate boxes that bring forward the connotation of palm cards or prompts. This is the sign and signifier effect described by Kellner et al under the second core concept of media literacy. That presentation of messages relies on signs and signifiers (Kellner, 2005). If we accept that these boxes the stories are taken to be the sign for a palm card, then the signifier a viewer takes from this is that they are expected to read them out to their respective audience. Thus again we see the imposition of the created message on its audience. In effect creating a premade family exchange to accompany the premade meal.
3) What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in the message?
As addressed earlier the three stories can be seen as forcing a ‘this is the way it is’ mentality. The three stories are positioned from a set background, lifestyle, and values. The first two stories are based around the presumption that celebrity and TV are of large importance to the consumers of this product. This is the way in which Kellner et al describes media as; reinforcing the dominant ideology or culture. This message being created for a modern western, it can be assured that it is aimed at a people who are defined by Thoman as the ‘coach potato’ (Thoman, 2005). There is also the worship of celebrity present in these stories. Presented very invasively as the first story asks what celebrity you look like and a second asking the all too rude question asking you which family from TV you would prefer to live with. This is highly interesting as it conveys the value that celebrities should be held up and aspired towards from ‘regular people’. As Camille Paglia once said, “Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols”, . The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.” This is the value transmission, that Thoman states people should be aware of and avoid simply being passive viewers of the media (Thoman, 2005).
4) How might different people understand this message differently from me? Well it might be easy to say that other people would understand this message differently from me as they lack my paranoid and cynical nature, but I digress. Kellner states that a person’s interpretation of media; can be influenced by their own background. For example a ‘regular person’ may be able to merely go through the three stories with their family and not see them as the celebrity and pop culture worship as commented on by Camille Paglia. More over the interpretation over reasons for which TV family a person would rather live with would differ entirely from one person to the next. Furthermore the idea of the favourite childhood memory would be entirely different as each person brings a separate value basis for which memory rates as the best. Earlier also it was mentioned that the designers used palm card like signs and signifiers. This is only effective if a person is of a cultural discourse that recognises these as a sign for palm cards. 5) What is omitted from this message? Perhaps the only thing that can be said of these three stories in terms of what is omitted is the ‘why’. Why are these deemed to have been the best three conversation starters to have been placed on the packaging for the family meal. Kellner et al gives a rather cynical explanation. That it is the job of media to sell something to the consumer (Kellner, 2005). This is not too far as stretch as we have to remember that this is a piece of McDonalds packaging that has been specifically designed to appeal to select target audience of the ‘regular family’. A regular family with the imposed views, values and culture that supports the ‘way it is’ for society. Indeed it does the job of tying together all the stereotypical images of the modern western family that comes from the Americanised culture. Perhaps what is omitted from this is the view point that is not from the imposed ‘way it is’ image that the message intends to reinforce. The Jean Paul Satre reading, politically passionate family whose dinner conversation would rival that of even the most enlightened of Plato’s republic. Through the course of this seemingly long winded ramble I have attempted to point out that even the most innocuous of media, the humble McDonalds package. Can contain highly interesting and problematic content for the media literate citizen to enjoy. That indeed every piece of media that we take in should be questioned so that we do not become the ‘coach potato’ that Thoman talks about in her writing. Because after all as Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, and as life today is told to us by the media we must examine everything they say. |
||||
