Critical approaches of media texts
Beach's focus on eight critical approaches that can be adapted in any given study of a media text illustrates varied opportunities for instruction that teachers can bring into their curriculum. In the following summaries of these approaches, I include examples of how teachers can engage their students to think in these critical ways.
Rhetorical/Audience Analysis - This type of analysis focuses on how "language, signs, and images" are used to influence an audiences' behaviors (Beach, 34). Persistent exposure to these images can influence audiences to identify with given ideas, cultural assumptions, and aesthetic, or even social, values. Audiences are not passive receptors, but have the ability to recognize how they are perceived by the rhetor (those responsible for the presentation of a given message) by noticing messages; similarly, audiences can be manipulated to adopt the values presented in the argument of the text. [Students may recognize how certain products are associated with messages emphasizing youthfulness, attractiveness, gender roles, etc.]
Semiotic/Narrative Analysis - All cultures have established signs whose meanings are directly (and sometimes indirectly) understood or interpreted by peoples within that culture. Students have the ability to recognize signs in a given text, and relate the meaning(s) of those signs to the broader theme(s), or argument(s), of that text. All cultures present narratives in given narrative structures that take on familiar structures. People within those cultures recognize the conventions of those genres, and anticipate events. Further, the narrative structure of a text can help in establishing which characters the audience identifies with. [Students may notice how symbols in, say, the film of The Wizard of Oz, contribute to how we empathize with the four characters off to see the wizard, while numerous signs present the Wicked Witch of the West as evil.]
Poststructuralist Analysis - Within this analytical process, the audience recognizes simplistic binary oppositions that are suggested in the text (e.g., "good/evil", "right/wrong", "love/hate"[Beach, 37]). Then the audience confronts the simple narrative structure by offering how these ideas are too simple, and that they only superficially hold up. When contrary examples/events are held up to the text, they weaken the message being presented. [Students could critique anti-war films (e.g., Hearts and Minds - a documentary relying heavily on editing and images of violence and inequality as techniques to argue for the ill-conceived purposes of the Vietnam War) by noting which images are, and are not, presented in this text; or, contrarily, students could critique media depictions of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as misrepresenting the horror of the reality.]
Critical Discourse Analysis - Discourses consist of "ideological perspectives that shape how people perceive the world and their own identities" (Beach, 38). We can recognize how a text relates a given discourse, either from the narrative voice's perspective, or from the perspective of given characters within the text. Audiences can critically analyze discourses from a variety of perspectives (e.g., with regard to class or race). [Students can differentiate between the similarities and differences in the use of rhetoric between George W. Bush, and recorded interviews with Osama bin Laden after the tragedy of September 11, 2001; or students can compare how Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X address similar inequalities through differing arguments.]
Psychoanalytic Theories - As texts can appeal to "subconscious desires, needs, and fears defining one's identity", audiences can recognize how they respond to various images/narratives. Audiences can further recognize that those responses were predictable, and deliberately designed to evoke (or trigger) those deep seated emotions. [Students recognize messages presented in television advertisements for engagement rings, deodorant, dating services, etc., and explicate how the audience responds to those messages.]
Feminist Criticism - In cultures heavily influenced by persistent patriarchal, and/or heterosexist values, the majority of media texts play on these ideas. Sometimes, these media texts deliberately confront said values, but more often than not, these persisting values are perpetuated in media texts. Homosexual men and women are often portrayed as comic figures, while women are portrayed variably as "domesticated", irrational, and possibly deferent to males. These performances are largely based on cultural differences, as opposed to any biological differences. [Students can recognize differences between the main characters in the Merchant/Ivory film Remains of the Day, and relate how they attempt to fulfill, as well as defy, their cultural gender roles.]
Postmodern Theory - Here, the artificiality of a text's theme, or message, is recognized by the audience. Modern ideas of "progress," "truth," "human improvement," "high art," "science," and "technology" are challenged (Beach, 41). [Students watching postmodern films can illustrate how the films deconstruct/displace traditional narrative techniques in an effort to expose the artificiality of modern narratives.]
Postcolonial Theory - This critical approach recognizes the ethnocentric perceptions that still persist in Western cultures, after the end of most direct colonialist affiliations with countries. Indeed, audiences critiquing texts from this perspective may notice that certain colonial attitudes continue to this day, both conceptually, as well as physically (e.g., in the intervention of the U.S. military in world affairs). [Students can notice the differences in the news media depictions of similar events by comparing programming on Fox News and Al Jazeera.]