Work slowly through the following headings, making notes, clicking links and looking up concepts online as needed. It's a nice chilled out lesson, if you want it to be...
1 - Analyse the Louboutin double page spread, making explicit reference to the following points:
- Barthesean codes and conventions – hermeneutic, proairetic, referential and symbolic
- Layout and design
- Composition - positioning of masthead/headlines, cover lines, images, columns
- Font size, type, colour
- Images/photographs - shot type, angle, focus
- Mise-en-scene – colour, lighting, location, costume/dress, hair/make-up
- Graphics, logos
- Language – headline, sub-headings, captions – mode of address
- Copy
- Anchorage of images and text
- Elements of narrative
Remember, the more notes you make here, the better
2 - Analyse the Zucchetti double page spread, using exactly the same headings as above
Remember, these two images from a double page spread. The image with the woman in the bath is on the left, the tap is on the right.
3 - Subversive representations
Analyse the image of the woman in the bath. How is it constructed, what messages are being constructed here? And how could this image be see as being subversive?
4 - Researching Osasco
Much of Adbusters seems to either assume a massive amount of prior knowledge on behalf of the reader, or, at the very least, a willingness to research. So with this in mind, research Osasco, in Sao Paulo. What is notable about this place, and why does this publication want to draw our attention to it?
5 - What an earth is Zucchetti?
In this scene from the excellent crime drama The Wire, major lieutenant 'Bunny' Colvin is mentoring a group of children who are wrapped up in Baltimore's criminal underworld. These kids are comfortable on the streets, and in some cases are already successful criminals. But what happens when they are taken to an exclusive restaurant?
There exists something called cultural capital. Capital is money. However, simply being rich does not change much. Without a knowledge of customs, products, rituals and services, it is more or less impossible to gain access to exclusive and exclusionary lifestyles. We can refer to this as cultural capital, where your value can be measured by how you talk, dress, act, what you own, and the knowledge required to succeed in bourgeois society.
Click here. What is this? What is being sold? What is ACTUALLY being sold here?
And what message is adbusters presenting to the audience?
6 - Paul Gilroy and postcolonial identity
Paul Gilroy argued that many of the same prejudices that existed throughout Britain's colonial history still exist today.
Google colonialism and postcolonialism. What are these concepts? How do they relate to Adbusters? And how is Adbusters challenging these views?