Critical Approaches

Critical Approaches to Media Texts:

Students should be taught a variety of critical stances and approaches they can take to analyzing media texts. The prominent approaches to such critiques are rhetorical/audience, semiotic, poststructuralist, critical discourse analysis, psychoanalytic, feminist, postmodern and postcolonial. Each critique brings new light to the media text that students are examining.
The first approach investigates how media texts use language, images and signs in relation to the audience, in which case is used to adopt certain responses or beliefs. This approach uses audiences as active participants in part of symbolic or imagined communities within the media text. Another part of this approach is how audiences are socialized by the media and may prefer that the media are safe and perhaps predictable. One example give from Richard Beacher’s book A Web-Linked Guide to Resources and Activities is the media’s portrayal of the invasion of Iraq and the little information from the media given about civilian causalities.
The next approach to analyzing media texts is the semiotic approach. This approach analyzes the social and cultural meaning of signs and codes. One of the key aspects of this approach is that meanings of these signs are cultural and therefore can change depending on the cultural context. Audiences of that specific culture will be able to draw together the cultural contexts from analyzing the codes and signs. One example might be that when most drivers in the United States see a sign or light that is red they more often than not refer to it as a sign to stop where as in another part of the world it may not mean stop.
Taking the postructuralist approach requires that the students examine how language is put into categories and then is influences audience’s perceptions. It examines opposites as simplistic categorizations of the characters of the media texts. Students would study opposites such as male and female but also good/evil and real/artificial. Students would note the contradictions and how these affect the performance and context of the media content that they are studying. An example of this would be to have students analyze and discuss the males and females in a certain movie such as There will be Blood.
Critical discourse analysis deals with the larger ideological perspectives that shape the world. Discourse is what is normal in the social world. Two major discourses discussed are class and race. A major part of the discourse of race deals with Marxism and “ how discourses of class serve to define the meaning of social practices or artifacts as class markers and to maintain or challenge” (Beacher 36). The idea of working-class and middle-class and identifying them in media texts is important to this approach along with the message as to why and how the director or creator is showing these specific classes in those ways. The discourse of race works similar to the discourse of class only it relates to race. An example that could depict both race and class would be the movie with Hilary Swank called Freedom Writers, which deals with a white woman teacher in an urban neighborhood.
The psychoanalytic approach is influenced by subconscious desires, wants, needs, and fears in which define one’s identity. A way to describe psychoanalytic thought in media texts would be how underlying themes recur throughout the media, students can discuss subconscious fears and desires and how they affect the characters and how and why they are there in the first place. An example of applying psychoanalytic lenses would be to analyze a Simpson’s episode and have the students dissect the character’s actions and how they are shaped by their desires, fantasies, and fears.
Feminist media criticism relates to not only how women are portrayed in media contexts but also how males and gender in general are perceived. New ideas on feminism is and gender all together, is fluid and free-floating rather than being defined to a body. An example of this could be to have the students analyze a movie and discuss how gender and women are portrayed and the message the director or producer is trying to give away.
Postmodern analysis challenges the modernist’s “master narratives” that are connected to truth and art. The postmodern analysis debunks the idea that these narratives will lead to greater life happiness. This approach deals a lot with media and reality and whether or not media constructs its own reality. An example of this would be to have the students watch postmodern films such as Pulp Fiction and have them discuss the role the nature of the events in the plot.
The last approach discussed is postcolonial, which examines the imperialist views of third world countries in literature and media texts. Imperialism plays a large role and history of European countries and dominance. Colonial power and its affects on the country are important concepts. Especially important today because of the large influence of international community. An example of this would be reading a book or watching a movie about colonism.