This should have been done long ago, but here it is!

Critical lenses, and their use in the examination of media texts.

1.) Rhetorical/Audience

Rhetorical analysis of a text or media text is fundamentally an examination of the “language” of a text in an attempt to determine how the text attempts to manipulate the audience’s reaction to the subject material. This critical analysis examines how media messages “position audiences to adopt certain responses, beliefs, or practices” (Beach 34). It is an examination of the relationship between author, purpose, and audience.

2.) Semiotic Analysis

Roland Barthes’s ideas about semiotics influenced this idea of critical analysis. Barthes believed that particular cultures had specific codes worked into objects, visual cues, and images. By examining the relationship between the “signifier” and the “signified”, one can find a subtextual message within the visual fabric of a media text. A extremely simplistic example of this is the idea in most Western cultures that green=go and red=stop.

3.) Psychoanalytic

Psychoanalytic criticism is derived primarily from the work of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, and is broadly summarized as follows: the subconscious workings of an author or a society can be seen in the works of art and media produced by those people. One of the most common subjects examined by psychoanalytic critics is the idea of gender and gender roles within a society, as well as sexual function as a driving force behind many illogical actions or neurotic behaviors. Examination of symbols as subconscious ideation is key.

4.) Feminist

Feminist criticism is an examination of contradictory discourse of gender found in media and literary texts. The construction of “myths” about femininity, especially myths created and propagated by a patriarchal society, can lead to static ideas about the nature of gender and sex. Modern feminist theory posits that gender is a constantly changing concept which is continually – and often contradictorily – redefined by the art, texts, and media of a society.

5.) Postcolonial

Postcolonial critical discourse examines the way in which Western society conceptualizes the rest of the world, especially defining non-Western, colonized civilizations as “other” or “different”. This definition of culture as either “normal” -that is Western - and “other”- non-Western -creates a specific value system under which all objects, images, and persons may be judged. From the colonial perspective, the closer something is to the Western norm, the better it is.


I already use each of these schools of thought within my classroom, sometimes with an explicit discussion of their philosophical underpinnings, or sometimes by simply asking questions which might lead students to think about a text from a particular critical perspective. However, my usage of various critical lenses is almost completely limited to the analysis of literature, seldom to film, and never to electronic media sources such as the internet, blogs, forums, or web communities like interest sites or networking groups (like Facebook or MySpace).

I think a semiotic analysis of various popular websites could be absolutely fascinating. Of course, examining a commercial or product placement within a film from a rhetorical/audience critical perspective could be likewise insightful. This could be combined with a feminist perspective nicely. I do a unit already which requires a psychoanalytic analysis of Dr. Strangelove (which is rife with Freudian psycho-sexual symbolism).

However, I think my most effective unit which requires critical analysis of a modern media text is my “music as literature” unit. The students pick a popular song of their own liking and examine it from a critically analytical point of view. I often get students who combine feminist and psychoanalytic thought in their examination of modern pop acts like Britney Spears or Rihanna, and while I never thought of it before, one student’s examination of three Bob Dylan songs was strongly semiotic! I'm not sure it's possible to draw any sort of conclusion about "Subterranean Homesick Blues" without a semiotic analysis of the imagery within the lyrics.