- The boys watched the movie Natural Born Killers repeatedly.
- They were heavy Internet users and communicated by e-mail with others who were equally filled with anger and rage.
- They were fans of "industrial rock" music bands whose lyrics speak of violence and killing.
- They were avid players of the video game Doom, whose object is to kill whatever gets in the player's way.
At such a time, the question, Do we need to teach children to understand, interpret, and evaluate the media? seems moot. Kids spend on average 1,000 hours each year watching television. Add to this figure the hours that they spend watching feature films, listening to CDs and the radio, playing video games, and surfing the Web.
Literacy has traditionally been associated with reading and comprehending written texts. We need to understand the word text as an encompassing term involving the many ways in which we communicate. These days, the varieties of technological communications are probably "read" more frequently than print texts. What messages are created by photographic manipulations, billboards, designer labels, buttons, advertising jingles, videos, lyrics, professional wrestling, and talk show guests?
As with traditional literacy, reading is only part of the equation. Comprehension is equally important: What good is the ability to read if we cannot understand the words? Students must learn to interpret and understand media messages to make responsible decisions about their media choices.
Two Schools of Thought
Schools in the United States have traditionally taken a protectivist approach to the media, and many parents have approved of this approach. That is, if we don't let our children see the violence of music videos and R-rated films, if we don't let them buy gangsta rap and recordings of violent songs, if we refuse to let them play video games, then they will not be influenced by such media messages.
Although this method may have worked well enough in earlier decades, it is now impossible to enforce. Children and teens can easily go to a friend's house and watch an R-rated video or film on a cable channel, listen to a local alternative rock radio station, or watch or listen to a TV or radio talk show. They can play video games in the entryways of local pizza shops. Young people will see the messages that many adults try to hide. And the message becomes even more titillating and desirable when they must sneak around to view or listen. Unfortunately, they receive these messages without having the skills to analyze them and arrive at an educated opinion.
Some countries, notably Canada, have taken a different approach to media education by recognizing that, like it or not, the media messages to which some may object are here to stay. Further, these media are available because a large number of consumers will pay to see or hear them. The student who is safest from unsavory messages is the student who is educated about them and can assess and evaluate the messages for him- or herself.
- All media are constructed. They have a purpose—entertainment, information, persuasion, propaganda—and are carefully created with a variety of media tools.
- Because media constructions have a purpose, they also have a point of view. The consumer must determine the purpose and whether to accept or reject it.
- Different people will interpret media messages differently because of their divergent experiences and values. Although some may find a car chase scene exciting and entertaining, others will be unable to view it because of unpleasant associations.
- The forms of media contribute to their meaning. Listening to a report on the radio and viewing a report on the same subject on TV can create two different opinions. A famous example is the Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates, in which radio listeners believed that Nixon won, whereas television viewers proclaimed Kennedy the winner.
By studying media messages, students come to recognize that all media presentations, even those intended to inform and present objective information, are creations designed for a particular effect. Ultimately, the viewers need to decide whether they like or believe the presentation and its point of view.
One Model for Teaching Media Literacy
In 1998, executives at Turner Learning and South-Western Educational Publishing met to discuss student and teacher needs in the areas of critical-thinking and media-education skills. Although skeptics have criticized the involvement of a major media company in teaching media literacy, this partnership combines the expertise of a well-respected educational publisher with the resources of an equally respected media company, CNN. The resulting curriculum is a multiple-media package for high school and entry-level college students titled Media Matters: Critical Thinking in the Information Age. The module contains an active-learning student workbook, a teacher's guide, accompanying video and audio clips, supplementary materials on computer disks, and a Web site.
One of the difficulties that we encountered was that few instructors teach media courses exclusively. Many teachers combine aspects of the media into their core subjects—literature, social studies, or political science. As a result, they feel unprepared to teach media literacy, and they don't have the time to collect media materials that they would need for examples. With the collective libraries of Turner and the reels of CNN coverage, the companies were able to provide not only the study materials, but also a wide diversity of media examples. The process was trickier, though, than any of us dreamed.
To begin, we invited a focus group of teachers to review sample videos and lessons. One video was a CNN news feature about advertising to teens. More than half the teachers told us that they would not be able to show the feature in their classes because it included a short clip of the Spice Girls wearing tight shirts with no bras (the scene took about three seconds). Ironically, these are the kinds of scenes that teens witness repeatedly, whether their parents allow it or not. Given the opportunity to discuss this kind of feature and why it is produced and popular, kids would have the chance to talk about sexism and its ability to sell products. This diffuses some of the sensationalism because students learn to distance themselves from the message when they deconstruct it. In the end, we had to cut that portion from the clip to use the rest of the feature.
Protectivism confounded us throughout the project. Even though teachers might be willing to use popular media examples, school policies or parents' objections forced us to look for noncontroversial examples. Even a kiss scene from Gone with the Wind was strongly frowned on! (We kept it in anyway.)
The problem of censorship is not new. We continue to hear about novels being pulled from the shelves of our school libraries. But although adults may be able to shelter their children from reading printed texts of which they do not approve, they cannot prevent them from observing other media messages. Witness giant billboards of bikini-clad women holding cans of beer and TV commercials advertising violent new feature films. A recent beer commercial has a sexy young woman pulling on black lingerie and a slinky black dress to a tune with the lyrics, "I know what boys like." In the last few seconds, she pulls a beer from the refrigerator and dabs some behind her ears. We need to re-engage the public to find common ground on teaching students how to approach these materials.
When parental censorship was not the problem, copyrights and corporations were. An executive for a well-known candy company insisted that we cut a four-second clip of its 1950s TV commercial from a news feature because he didn't like our chapter on advertising. It took six months to get clearance from a major film corporation to use the photo of a movie producer who had graciously consented to do an interview for the text. We even had to struggle to use clips from within our own organizations.
Weathering these battles has been worthwhile. Using media examples in print and on video, audio, and the Web, students now have the opportunity to recognize stereotypes, biases, multiple viewpoints, advertising devices, camera techniques, and photographic manipulations, all of which contribute to the overall effect to move, entertain, persuade, or manipulate a consumer.
A Primer on Media Education
- Background. Historical and contemporary backgrounds of a particular medium can clarify the reasons for that medium's existence. For example, William Jawitz (1996) explains how and why advertising emerged. When producers made items on demand, they had no need to advertise because there was not a surplus of goods. With industrialization, more items were produced than were immediately necessary, so buyers were enticed by ads to consume products whether or not they had planned to make an immediate purchase. Ads helped fund and promote the printing industry because printers discovered that they could charge businesses to place ads in their newspapers. Eventually, media production became so dependent on ad dollars that now large manufacturers can control media content by refusing to place ads in magazines or during shows when they do not like their message. This information helps students recognize the relationship among subject matter, consumerism, and advertising.
- Tools. Recognizing media tools helps students distance themselves from the total suspension of disbelief to evaluate the effects of the media product. When they recognize that a zoom-in camera shot makes a character appear larger than life or that an upward camera angle makes the character look more important than others, students can determine whether they agree with the statements made by those cameras. When they recognize the repetitive techniques used to portray certain groups, such as people of color, they can go beyond the stereotypes to question their responses.
- Deconstruction. In media literacy, deconstruction means to recognize or reveal those techniques used to make up the media product. For example, students learn that computer software is used routinely to shave a few more inches from an already thin model. They can apply this knowledge when they look through fashion and beauty magazines and recognize that a photo of a model is unrealistic. In this way, students can look at the individual components in a media message to recognize how the tools create an illusion of a real world. It's similar to looking at a painting. The paint is not really fruit or a bridge. Many brush strokes and various techniques create the illusion of the subject.
- Evaluation. When students evaluate, they consider the message that the tools create. How do students feel about the unreal, computer-manipulated body images set forth as ideals of beauty? What do they think of the roles assigned to women, teens, parents, and different ethnic groups? How much do these portrayals affect their own viewpoints?Students become critical of media messages and discerning consumers of media. They are empowered to take control of their reactions and to recognize the effects that media messages have on their emotions, desires, and beliefs. They do not need to be sheltered from sexist or violent messages because they can interpret the manipulations for themselves.
- Original construction. Original construction empowers students to create their own messages. Using their knowledge of media tools and production, they can invent powerful media products either for their schools or for their communities. They can also react to messages with which they disagree by using the language of the trade to send their own messages to the producers and advertisers.
Why Study Pro Wrestling?
It can be difficult to convince some parents, teachers, and students that it is important to study the media. Although many would not object to an acclaimed film production of Macbeth, plenty would find the study of World Championship Wrestling to be completely inappropriate for the classroom.
Think about it. Forty million people watch pro wrestling every week. Twenty-four percent of the viewers are children between 2 and 17. Additionally, consumers spend about $1 billion every year on wrestling-related products: action figures, posters, video games, trading cards, and magazines. TV Guide writer Lyle Harris interviewed a fan who said, "Americans need something to believe in; we all do. It makes you feel good. We need to believe in something, even if it's fake. It brings everybody together."
TV and radio talk shows can have a similar effect. Jerry Springer has a large contingent of teen followers who cannot always separate fictional conventions from the truth. One viewer interviewed on CNN said, "They are our backyard fence," comparing talk shows with the old-fashioned practice of discussing neighborhood events over picket fences. Isn't it better to teach students about the media tools and conventions that created these programs than to have them believe the stories and messages?
For years, we have blamed the media for problems of violence in our society, and studies confirm a correlation, if not a causation, between increased violence and sexism in the media and increased individual acts of aggression. These media messages are not likely to disappear. As long as sex and violence sell, they will be available to the public. Video, audio, Web, and image texts are pervasive. Students must learn to read these messages analytically and critically to be well educated and literate in our media-saturated society.
