Media messages

Beauty contests have become a rage, courtesy the attention heaped on it by the media. The winners of these competitions are crowned and t...

Beauty contests have become a rage, courtesy the attention heaped on it by the media. The winners of these competitions are crowned and treated as royalty by our media. We collectively celebrate their triumph. And yet, for every winner that we celebrate, there are 50 other contestants that become invisible, their stories untold. What is it that allows us to only concentrate on certain aspects of life and ignore others? Without being aware our lives are slowly getting dominated by a super teacher 8211; the media.

But are what they portray real? The truth is that whatever we watch on screen or read is a representation. It can be thought of as a refraction instead of a reflection of reality. This distinction between reality and representation is all the more difficult to make when one is young. Take the case of advertising. How come every one in the advertisements is rich, glamourous and beautiful?

Advertisements usually perpetuate certain dominant beliefs to help them sell their products. Fair is beautiful is one such notion. Not only does the girl in the advertisement use the cream but she acquires a boyfriend and his stamp of approval proves that she is truly beautiful. The psychological effect of this kind of constant perpetuation can be devastating. Other similar beliefs include an anti-old age bias. In the hair dye advertisement the woman is traumatised at the idea of being addressed as aunty8217; by the youngster. So the only old people we see on the screen are benevolent grandmothers. Then there is the case of fat people. Firstly almost all the individuals on screen are thin and glamourous. The only contribution of fat characters is to provide comic relief. Advertising with mass media, thus constantly perpetuates the cult of youth, beauty and glamour.

Advertising is about selling products which it does through the creation of images. After all if the image of quot;the complete manquot; was not created, how would one sell the suiting to all the men aspiring to be complete? In our imagination we are buying that image along with the product. Thus cigarette ads promise you that you will become quot;machoquot; and somehow acquire the beautiful house, woman and car shown in the advertisement. And we buy that image. What it does not tell you is about the devastating effects of lung cancer due to smoking.

The key is to develop a screen through which you can filter and analyse information constantly being bombarded through the media. It is lamentable that our education system has not deemed it fit to include media studies as part of the curriculum despite examples from the West about their necessity.

However we have options. The option is to read media messages with intelligence.