Youth and youth sexuality: Conflictual media representations
In my dissertation research, students expressed real affection for films in which dominant media images of male sexuality were “natural, promiscuous, and power-oriented,” and male sexuality was juxtaposed with dominant images of female sexuality that were “sexually appealing, sexually chaste, and responsible for limiting men’s sexuality” (Smiler, 2009, p. 364).
Again and again throughout the course of the study, dominant media images of sexuality rose up as barriers against the tide of caring and compassion I was hoping to instill as a ubiquitous means for youth to envision a new tomorrow. A discontinuity existed between my intended sites of critical inquiry and media sites where youth sexuality was represented.
Ways into shared deconstruction of media images of youth and youth sexuality
Advertisements infuse contemporary life. Part of my teacher-researcher study examined whether explicit instruction in consumerism, advertisement design, and symbolic representation enhanced students’ reading, knowing, viewing, speaking, and learning. Students’ discourse around literacy issues and students’ final design products were analyzed to link communicative messages and socio-cultural contexts to social networks and meaning making in a high school English classroom. Six case studies centered on students who fit the description of “the children we worry about the most” (Hankins, 2003). Data analysis utilized social semiotic and social discourse theories to demonstrate new definitions of literacy in a public school classroom through multimodality.
Through the lens of Killing Us Softly III (Kilbourne, 2002), critical literacy praxis allowed students to distance themselves from contemporary advertising landscapes. They examined how, why, and to what effect corporations and their advertisers use images to sell their products in conjunction with a variety of other texts. Kilbourne uses mass media images of femininity against social reality, poses advertising fantasy against actual experiences, and encourages a demystification of stories advertising narrates about females against the actual lives of females.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufHrVyVgwRg [summary video: 7 min.]
http://www.jeankilbourne.com/video.html [main Kilbourne url]
http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/206/studyguide_206.pdf [study guide]
http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/206/studyguidehandout_206.pdf [handouts]
By showing how and why advertising removes agency, this study expanded Kilbourne’s positioning to include other forms of market capitalism. Top Superbowl advertisements over the last decade, for example, came under analysis and consideration.
http://superbowlads.fanhouse.com/2010/godaddycom-danica-patrick/ [Danika Patrick video]
http://www.youtube.com/superbowl [2009 Superbowl advertisement videos]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Ce-SJreIA [2008 Superbowl advertisement videos]
Jonathan Katz' Tough Guise: a primer on masculinity
This 1999 video examines the relationshop between images in popular culture and the social construction of male identies in the United States -- of which media messages play a large role.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI [summary video, 7 min.]
Sample student artifacts
In my dissertation research, students expressed real affection for films in which dominant media images of male sexuality were “natural, promiscuous, and power-oriented,” and male sexuality was juxtaposed with dominant images of female sexuality that were “sexually appealing, sexually chaste, and responsible for limiting men’s sexuality” (Smiler, 2009, p. 364).
Again and again throughout the course of the study, dominant media images of sexuality rose up as barriers against the tide of caring and compassion I was hoping to instill as a ubiquitous means for youth to envision a new tomorrow. A discontinuity existed between my intended sites of critical inquiry and media sites where youth sexuality was represented.
Ways into shared deconstruction of media images of youth and youth sexuality
Advertisements infuse contemporary life. Part of my teacher-researcher study examined whether explicit instruction in consumerism, advertisement design, and symbolic representation enhanced students’ reading, knowing, viewing, speaking, and learning. Students’ discourse around literacy issues and students’ final design products were analyzed to link communicative messages and socio-cultural contexts to social networks and meaning making in a high school English classroom. Six case studies centered on students who fit the description of “the children we worry about the most” (Hankins, 2003). Data analysis utilized social semiotic and social discourse theories to demonstrate new definitions of literacy in a public school classroom through multimodality.
Through the lens of Killing Us Softly III (Kilbourne, 2002), critical literacy praxis allowed students to distance themselves from contemporary advertising landscapes. They examined how, why, and to what effect corporations and their advertisers use images to sell their products in conjunction with a variety of other texts. Kilbourne uses mass media images of femininity against social reality, poses advertising fantasy against actual experiences, and encourages a demystification of stories advertising narrates about females against the actual lives of females.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufHrVyVgwRg [summary video: 7 min.]
http://www.jeankilbourne.com/video.html [main Kilbourne url]
http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/206/studyguide_206.pdf [study guide]
http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/206/studyguidehandout_206.pdf [handouts]
By showing how and why advertising removes agency, this study expanded Kilbourne’s positioning to include other forms of market capitalism. Top Superbowl advertisements over the last decade, for example, came under analysis and consideration.
http://superbowlads.fanhouse.com/2010/godaddycom-danica-patrick/ [Danika Patrick video]
http://www.youtube.com/superbowl [2009 Superbowl advertisement videos]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Ce-SJreIA [2008 Superbowl advertisement videos]
Jonathan Katz' Tough Guise: a primer on masculinity
This 1999 video examines the relationshop between images in popular culture and the social construction of male identies in the United States -- of which media messages play a large role.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI [summary video, 7 min.]
Sample student artifacts
What is evident is that the advertising unit generated much excitement in students who were otherwise detached from a prescribed curriculum; it created unique instructional opportunities and literacy objectives to be obtained in a typically technology-deprived public school; and it engendered constant multimodal connections to students’ own lives. The advertising unit instilled power --- both through teacher-researcher access to new instructional techniques and through students’ perceptions of being special. Multi-modal texts are imbued with signs.
Sign-systems, including interpersonal language, other media, and other areas of discourse, create a social reality to which youth respond as “natural”(Dewey, 1966; , 1989), yet reality cannot be separated from the sign-systems in which they are experienced (Chandler, 2002). Multimodality will be norm of tomorrow’s world, and teachers as researchers can help to smooth the transition for public schools toward acceptance of multimodality as an appropriate instructional critical literacy tool in the public school classroom.
