Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Media Products

1. Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Media Products Umar Hassan

2. Genre Codes and Conventions: ShortList • Content: ShortList is a male-orientated free magazine which covers a broad range of subjects that are for the everyday modern man who’s interested in popular culture. All the articles used on ShortList have an angle that’s associated with men to give the impression that men are stylish and passionate about their interests. • With the advertisements on ShortList, they are more likely to have an item that relates to what men wear or otherwise have. For example on the front cover, the first reaction once you see ShortList is Grand Theft Auto V dominating the first two pages because immediately the male reader’s thinking “I want this”. This means that by using an advertisement on the front page of ShortList, it persuades the male buyer to have or want this product for themselves because they feel loved and wanted if they buy GTA. • Since the pictures used on all the articles on ShortList look a bit washed out although there is some high-res pictures in there. Since it’s a free magazine, if they spent a lot more effort making all the pictures on every article high-resolution, then it would force ShortList to put a paywall of every magazine they sell because they would have to make ends meet if this magazine was selling more than ShortList expected.

3. This is what the front cover of ShortList looks like. The Masthead is at the top of the magazine with the logo using a serif typeface. The front cover immediately focuses on the item who is at the centre of attention. In this case it’s Noel Gallagher. By using “Your attention please” as the main headline, immediately grabs the reader’s attention to read the whole magazine. The masthead has all the main subjects ShortList covers for the everyday man on the top of every issue.

4. Style and Social Issues • ShortList’s design style on each article has a flat, but concise design made to be easy for the reader to read through the whole magazine without having the issue of reading through an article with inaccurate information. The focus on each article on ShortList is to focus in-depth on the man’s success, wants or needs because since it’s a male-orientated magazine, we are focusing on the subjects that the man is more likely to be interested in. • The layout in which ShortList lay their articles out is very easy to transition from one piece of text to the other smooth enough. This is because some articles use sub-headings so that one article doesn’t constantly drone on about the same subject, instead it focuses on other aspects of the subject whilst keeping readers interested about what’s actually going on in the magazine. • Social Issues: ShortList like any other magazine you’ll read has a lot of social issues it’s confronted with. They are more likely to focus on all sorts of issues such as political as mentioned with the Peter Mullan article about Scottish Independence and Marxism. As well as suicide and disabilities to make readers more aware about the dangers and effects these issues can have on men physically and mentally.

5. With one of ShortList’s articles focusing on Terror Culture. By using the title “Spawn of Bin Laden”, this immediately grabs the reader’s attention and makes them likely to read on. The use of the serif typeface along with the black makes this article look even more serious. The use of colour palettes such as the white in the background along with the red and black, this creates a picture in the reader’s head that this article is about terrorism. This is perfectly relatable to social issues because this article is looking at the issue of Terrorism and how they’re capturing Terrorists.

6. Stereotyping/Presence and Absence • Stereotyping: Once the reader comes onto the contents page, they can immediately see that the slogan for ShortList is “For Men With More Than One Thing On Their Minds”. This suggests in the slogan that men are stereotyped as being one-minded which is untrue because men are open-minded. Also, there’s no mention of women in any angle on any ShortList magazines. This makes ShortList not only xenophobic to women, but treats women like second-class citizens. This means that men who are on ShortList look more dominant. Whilst on the other hand, women are non-prevalent and are uncool. • Presence and Absence: There is no positive representation of women in any ShortList articles which makes the magazine sexist to women. This gives the indication that ShortList is a male-orientated magazine that doesn’t care for any viewpoints from women. Also, there’s little-to-no mention of any Working Class social group articles with men since ShortList want to aim at the Upper-to-Middle social classes because they see the Working Class as uncool and ignorant in our society.

7. Representations in ShortList • Negative: ShortList is very xenophobic to an audience of women who don’t read the magazine since it has male-orientated articles. • The use of the slogan “For Men With More Than One Thing On Their Hands”. This gives the impression that men are one-minded which is a stereotypical response because all men are not one-minded. • There’s also a mention in the Peter Mullan article about his dislike for gyms. This suggests that middle-aged people hate to improve their physique once they reach middle-age. • Positive: Use of advertisements with smartly dressed men to give men an idea that they are just as cool and stylish as women. • Men who take great care in being stylish are “passionate” and taken seriously by others. • Gives a positive representation of some articles in the magazine to show that men are successful. • Use of positive bias “No One Does This Like Apple”. This suggests in the article, Apple are great at promoting a product to the public.

8. Social Groups who read ShortList • The social groups who read ShortList is a very male-orientated audience. Presumably males who read ShortList are in the age range of 16-24 possibly 24+ onwards. • So the audience who read ShortList is quite a broad male audience since it covers a whole range of subjects that men are most likely to be interested in. Sport and Cars to name but a few subjects men are passionate about. • So ShortList tends to aim at the Working to Middle class man who’s interested in reading magazines that cover a bit of everything the everyday man wants to know in the magazine.

9. Symbols and Cultural Representations • Symbols: How symbolically ShortList is represented is the changes in the how we communicate with people by using “twee-speak” (cute). • ShortList aims at the Lowest Common Denominator man which means ShortList is trying to get as many men to read the magazine as possible. Whilst making it easy for the casual reader to read through the magazine without losing interest in ShortList. • The message for ShortList is every single man needs to have the same lifestyle and interests for their lives so that they don’t feel left out in society. • Cultural: Culturally how ShortList presents itself to the reader is by using men in smart clothing in advertisements and in some articles to grab the reader’s attention into saying “This is cool!” • There is also use of the white Middle-to-Upper social classes to highlight hotels in the grooming section of the magazine to make readers think they could live in a life of luxury. • Also, use of popular culture such as Apple’s highly-anticipated launch of the iPhone 5C and 5S to get readers talking about the latest new product out there.

10. Technical Representations • Technical: On the masthead, the font on the title logo has pointy ends. This suggests that ShortList is using a serif typeface for their masthead. • With the articles, the font used is an Arial typeface to make the texts on all the articles easier for the reader to read through the whole magazine. • The subjects covered on ShortList have fonts that are smooth and don’t have pointy ends. This suggests that a sans typeface may have been used for all the articles published. • The language used in ShortList tends to lean towards informal since the magazine aims at the everyday modern man. However, ShortList does have some formal articles in to balance the number of informal articles used. For example one of their articles covered an interview with Stephen Hawking getting up close with ShortList to look at his career in Science.