Media language - Woman, Adbusters, and textual analysis

While many different questions could be asked for the magazine industry, your principal argument is likely to always be the same. So, before we go any further, what are the fundamental differences between woman and adbusters? 

In order to keep things simple, let's only use the front covers of the two set editions to demonstrate how to answer two media language questions. Both of these questions are 30 markers, and therefore should take 50 minutes to answer. 

Question one - To what extent have historical contexts influenced the genre conventions of the magazines you have studied? [30]

DAC introduction

Genre refers to the ways in which a media product is categorised by the producer. Genre is absolutely essential for audiences as it allows audiences to decode the messages and ideologies encoded in magazines by producers. It is also essential for producers as it allows for audiences to be effectively targeted. In this essay, I shall argue that genre conventions are affected by historical contexts to a massive extent, and in fact present the single greatest factor in their differentiation. Genres shift over time, in a process known as genre fluidity, and societies ideologies as to what is right and wrong help influence this shift. I shall explore this idea by making reference to an edition of Woman published in 1964. Woman is women’s lifestyle magazine, first published in the 1930s that targets a female, working class mass audience. I shall contrast Woman with an edition of adbusters published in 2016. Adbusters is an unconventional hybrid of art, politics and counterculture that targets a middle class, nice audience. 

Content 

Woman 

• The main cover line promises audiences an interview with notable film director Alfred Hitchcock. The pull-quote here and its selection is typical of the woman’s lifestyle magazine. “British Women have a special magic”. The target audience are therefore positioned in an affirmative mode of address, which is delivered by a respected man. This reinforces the dominant patriarchal ideology of the 1960s, an the audience, feeling complemented, will be more likely to engage with this genre of magazine. 
• The selection of the model who features in the main cover image is hegemonically attractive, yet is differentiated from the glamorous representation of Grace Kelley from within the magazine. Instead, the model , through her symbolically natural makeup and her conventional haircut convey an ideology of a sweet, relatable housewife stereotype. This relatable mode of address specifically targets the mainstream class audience with a comparatively easy to achieve and and aspirational role model. Her unnatural smile, however, is connotative of the performative nature of gender, and the expectation of living up to hegemonic, patriarchally enforced beauty standards. This stereotypical assumption is highly typical of the women's lifestyle magazine 
• Airbrushed standards of beauty

Adbusters

• The costume of the model on the front of adbusters connotes war. However, completely lacking anchorage, this potentially middle eastern man represents any number of current conflicts and issues that face the world today. This highly confusing mode of address… ETC ETC ETC 

Question two: Roland Barthes argued that meaning is constructed through a symphony of codes. Evaluate this semiotic theory. Make reference to the magazines you have studied to support your answers [30]

Knee jerk reaction - Barthe’s theory is extremely useful at understanding the complex meanings constructed by magazines, providing the audience a range of opportunities to decode the often subtle ideologies of the producer

Plan 

Binary oppositions

Hermeneutic codes

Symbolic codes

Proairetic codes

Referential codes

Low productions values

MES

Anchorage

Main image

Unconventional adbusters

Conventional Woman 

CU

Feature article 

Headline

Ms

Hari and makeup 

Symbolic annihilation 

Subheadings

Commodity fetishism 

Stuart Hall

Liesbet van zoonen: codes construct sexist ideology

Coverlines

Masthead

Collage

Mixed media

Lexis

Colour scheme

Polysemy

Detournement 

Baudrillard

Audience positioning

Conservatism vs nihilism 

Capitalism vs anti-capitalism 

Men vs women 

Rich vs poor

DAC introduction

DAC introduction

Roland Barthes argued that a symphony of codes construct meaning in every media product. Barthe’s theory is extremely useful at understanding the complex meanings constructed by magazines, providing the audience a range of opportunities to decode the often subtle ideologies of the producer. In order to explore the wildly different ways in which codes can construct meanings, I shall be exploring the examples of Woman magazine, the edition here published in 1964 and appealing to mass, female, heterosexual, white conservative UK audiences. I shall contrast the meanings constructed in Woman with a 2016 edition of Adbusters, a Canadian anticapitalist magazine that p-resents a rather more complex and even inscrutable set of ideological perspectives to a diverse, yet predominately radical worldwide audience. 

An excellent example as to how ideological perspectives can be encoded through codes can be found in the front cover of both magazines.

Content

Adbusters

• Extensive use of hermeneutic codes, especially the screaming man that occupies the main image, constructs a distressing, violent and confusing mode of address. This highly unconventional utilisation of codes here constructs an address to a certain niche and radical audience, while at the same time distancing a mainstream mass audience. This use of unconventional codification is fairly typical on non-mainstream and anti-capitalist magazines
• The deliberately low production values, encoded through the MES of a brown splatter that covers both the masthead and the ‘cover model’ resembles nothing less than a printing error. This is highly unconventional, because this rejection of perfect production standards does not typically appeal to a mainstream mass audience. However, this highly unconventional mode of address can attract a certain radical niche audience who reject both the ideologies of capitalism and of commodity fetishism. By rejecting hegemonic traditional values, adbusters demonstrate through a symphony of codes a rejection of standard codes and conventions

Woman

• The symbolic code of the makeup of the model constructs an ideological perspective that from a hegemonic perspective, the function of women is to look good for a perceived heterosexual audience. This highly conservative and sexist ideology is further anchored through the additional symbolism of the purple background, which connotes a feminine and highly stereotypical mode of address. While Adbusters wants us to destroy the world, Woman magazine directly implores the heterosexual female target audience to conform to and reinforce certain hegemonic and heteronormative values. By conforming to patriarchal ideological perspectives of the time it was made, this impossible yet aspirational image encourages the lowly educated target audience to buy the magazine week after week in the hope of meeting these beauty standards. Codes here are completely essential in constructing this ideology