Essay #2: Media Analysis

(Adapted from the assignment prompt by Kimberlee Staking, kimart@umd.edu, Department of Womens Studies, University of Maryland, in 2011, http://www.humanities.umd.edu/vislit/exercises/MediaAnalysis2_staking.pdf)

This assignment asks you to become a cultural critic by trying to find answers for the questions below to analyze a piece from contemporary mass media. Your sampling of mass media will be two-fold: 1. Select an advertisement (in Turkish or English) in a recent issue of a magazine aimed specifically at teenage girls or women (or men). In each instance, your analysis will focus on the representations of women (or men) in these cultural artifacts. You will give an informal presentation or lead a discussion about this advertisement in the class (5 min per person). Who is the probable intended audience(s) for the magazine ad you are analyzing? Explain your answer. What is the print ad trying to sell? How does it make its appeal to the potential consumer? Does it appear to have any particular relationship to the articles accompanying it in the magazine? In your analysis of the print ad, focus on how womens (or men) bodies are positioned in the ad, whom they are looking at, who is looking at them, what they are wearing, etc. In what ways does the ad emphasize or construct womens (or men) sexuality? How does it (or does it?) construct womens (or men) abilities to be their own subjects rather than objects to be looked at?

2. Select a half hour of television (only in English; I will supply some samples that you might want to use) to analyze carefully. Take notes while watching with the prompts below in mind. Your analysis will emerge out of your reflections about and responses to the prompts below. First, you can answer these questions one by one. However, you cannot simply submit your work as a series of numbered responses to the prompts. Instead organize them in a formal essay format (900 words). Your responses should be carefully and thoughtfully written.

Remember to incorporate specific examples from the TV program you watched to illustrate your analysis. Prompts that guide you: 1) Who is the probable intended audience(s) for the television show you are analyzing? What factors contribute to your awareness of audience? Consider not only gender but also age, race/ethnicity, geographic location, etc. 2) Is there a relationship between the plot/action/narrative of the television show and the commercials that accompany it? To the target audience(s)? Explain. 1) Do the women who appear differ from one another, and if so, how? What is the relative frequency of women by age? By race/ethnicity? Are women (or anyone else) represented who are differently abled? According to dominant cultural ideals of beauty, how many women portrayed fall into the categories of 'beautiful,' 'average,' or 'unattractive'? What range of weight is represented between the women and the men and among the women themselves? 2) In what roles do women appear (or not appear)? Do they play multiple roles (e.g. wife, mother, lover, worker?) What types of jobs do they hold? How much time do they appear to devote to their different roles? What kinds of work do they do? Can you see any difference in the roles assigned to women or to men? 3) What level of education do the men and women seem to hold? Do you find women represented who appear to be of working-class backgrounds or to be poor? Are they major or minor characters? Are they portrayed sympathetically or used in ways that perpetuate stereotypes about race or class? 4) What is the relationship of women in the show to the products being advertised in commercials? Does it vary from program to program, from channel to channel? Is there any evidence of a famous assertion that in public representations of gender, men do the looking and women are there to be looked at?

Your essay should include the following parts: Introduction: this is where you introduce the program you will analyze and let your readers know what your standpoint on this tv program will be. Do you think the TV program depicts women in certain ways? How? Be sure to include an explicitly stated thesis and underline it. Body: o Contextualize: who is the audience, what is the purpose? o Organize your paragraphs in accordance with the questions above. o Provide examples from the TV program that support your thesis (Include quotes) o Remember to keep your analysis as objective and rational as possible Conclusion: this is where you restate the claim you have made in your thesis statement and summarize the main points you have made throughout your paper. Length: Three typed double-spaced pages; 875925 wordsdo not fall short or exceed even by one word! 1st Draft due: Email your copies to me as MS Word document by Tuesday, November 14th, midnight (23:59). Read the first drafts carefully and email your suggestions regarding content (not language or grammar related issues) to your group members by November 17th, midnight. 2nd Draft due: Email your drafts to your group members by Saturday, November 21st, midnight (23:59). Print out your group members drafts, read them carefully writing your notes in the margins, and bring them to our class meeting on Monday, November 24th. We will have a group conferencing that day. Because both your
partner/partners and I will have a copy of your paper, you only need to bring a copy for yourself.

Final version due: Email me your final versions to be graded by Saturday, November 27th, 2010, midnight (23:59).
Remember to: - use APA style to format your paper. Following is one of the many websites that you can use to check your APA formatting: < http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/>. - remember to underline your thesis statement. - incorporate at least one visual. *This paper is worth 15% of your total grade in class.