A2 English Media Studies

Katharina KojaDoretea

“Emotional Response… Calculated”

With a focus on the medium of film, and the issues of advertising and consumerism, students explore the following guiding questions:

• How does the media sell images and values, and how influential is this in shaping consumer identities?

• How are audiences manipulated into being consumers?

After reading Jean Kilbourne’s Can’t Buy My Love, as well as analyzing many other viewpoints from various videos, and finally, studying “Advertising” in Art Silverblatt’s Media Literacy: Keys to Interpreting Media Messages 3rd Ed. Students explore the emotional appeals used to spur consumerism. In particular, they use The Walt Disney Company as a case study to highlight the way in which Walt Disney movies highly emotional content sparks sympathy in the target audience – children. This is then transferred, through the “nag factor” among other marketing strategies to parents and their consumer habits. In short, they look at merchandising versus entertainment.