• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Media/Visual Literacy Art Education: Cigarette Ad Deconstruction

Posted on: Saturday, 7 May 2005, 03:00 CDT

Children's media/visual literacy has gained increasing importance in the field of education. Media educators (Considine & Haley, 1999; Couch, 1995; Kellner, 1988) advocate the need for children to acquire media/ visual literacy to survive in the world of global consumerism, especially the influence of media advertising. In contemporary life, it not surprising that the issues people talk about, the things they use, or the lifestyles they choose, are greatly influenced by what they see on television, the Internet, commercial billboards, and newspapers and magazines.

Through visual and textual manipulation, media advertising not only persuades people to buy the advertised product but also constructs false or questionable realities, beliefs, and values in relation to that product. Through the message of product desirability, these questionable beliefs and values are offered to children, either intentionally or unintentionally, and become sites of ideological struggle.

More often than not, an advertisement is composed mainly of images and textual symbols. Therefore, early art educators such as Broudy (1972) and more recently Barrett (2000), Duncum (2001), Freeman (1994a, 1994b), Stokrocki (2001), and others have strongly urged that art education foster media/visual literacy in children to help make them critical, informed consumers in a commercialized and image-saturated environment.

In the fall of 20021 conducted a pilot study to explore student responses to an art curriculum that fosters media/visual literacy. My study was an explorative case study in a junior high classroom at the Saturday Art School of a midwestern university. The curriculum focused on a unit called the "AdDeconstruction Project," designed to facilitate students' critical thinking and creative skills, and to provide them with the media/ visual literacy needed to deconstruct and reconstruct cigarette advertising. The project took place during four weekly sessions (3 hours per session) in a university-based computer lab and involved 11 junior high school students (1 male and 10 females) from diverse cultural backgrounds.

The students were first guided to analyze a number of cigarette advertisements in terms of their implicit and explicit meanings and explored issues of manipulation, consumerism, and health in relation to cigarette smoking. They then examined how they themselves are targets of the tobacco industry based purely on the profit motive. The students deconstructed and analyzed their chosen cigarette ads in terms of advertising persuasiveness, visual manipulation, intended message, and inferred meaning through a writing activity and a series of dialogic sessions. The students used what they had learned to redesign their chosen ads with Adobe Photoshop. Their works were displayed in a gallery to raise public awareness about the advertising of cigarette smoking.

Children as a Living Target

Teenagers are twice as likely to be influenced to smoke by cigarette advertising as they are by peer pressure, family members, or other factors (Evans, Parkas, Gilpin, Berry, & Pierce, 1995; Pierce, Choi, Gilpin, Farkas, & Berry, 1998). The tobacco industry repeatedly claims that they have made every effort to discourage teenagers from smoking. This claim, paradoxically, contradicts an internal memorandum released under court order that circulated through the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The memo bluntly suggested that, "realistically, if our company is to survive and prosper over the long term, we must get our share of the youth market. In my opinion, this would require new brands tailored to the youth market..." (R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, 1973). This memo clearly showed that the tobacco industry has attempted to market cigarettes to children.

Other internal documents released in 1998 revealed that the tobacco industry has long targeted 13- and 14-year-old children (Weinstein, 1998). For example, one advertising agency offered its marketing plan to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in a business letter that proposed how a children's video could be used to entice teenagers to use the Camel product. The central strategy, according to this letter, was to transform the Camel symbol into a moving, talking, animated cartoon character "through a series of full-scale animation (Disney style) videos.... Children love cartoons and these can be incorporated into the purchasing of cartons/packets of Camel cigarettes" (R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, 1988). Research has shown since that Joe Camel, the character associated with the Camel cigarette, has had a profound impact on children, including preschoolers. Almost one-third of 3-year-olds match Joe Camel with cigarettes in the same manner that they link the Mickey Mouse logo to the Disney Channel (Fischer, Schwartz, Richards, Goldstein, & Rojas, 1991).

Overwhelming evidence indicates that children are targets of the profit-driven tobacco industry. For example, in a 1996 survey by a New York advertising firm of 300 major executives of the advertising industry, 82% of the participants believed that tobacco advertising targeted at children has increased significantly, and 78% of them thought that tobacco ads persuade children to perceive smoking as more socially acceptable (National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, n.d.). More than half of all smokers begin smoking before the age of 14, and 90% begin by the age of 19. The average age at which children first use cigarettes is 13-14 years old (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1994). Despite no solid evidence to suggest a causal relationship between cigarette advertising to youth and underage smoking, tobacco use is rising among this age group. For example, in 1991,27.5% of U. S. high school students reported regular cigarette smoking. In 1997, high school student smoking increased to 36.4% (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2002). These alarming figures and issues of teenage smoking should convince educators of the power and influence of the visual media and the consequent need for education to help youth become more informed consumers.

Writing and Dialogue

The first activity of the AdDeconstruction Project was a cigarettead analysis writing activity. For this activity, I created a file folder on the desktop of each computer and stored an activity worksheet, along with three digitalized cigarette advertisements in the file folder. To begin the activity, students chose one of the digitalized cigarette ads in the file folder and analyzed it according to the prompts given on the worksheet. I did not explicitly tell students they were about to analyze cigarette ads. Instead, students assessed an ad in terms of visual components, advertising techniques, and intended and implicit messages. Mai- Lee1 looked at an ad with a smiling Hispanic female headshot that covered almost the entire ad space, together with some Spanish text along the side of the ad. She said, "There is a woman in the ad. She is smiling and she is pretty." Given that cigarette logos usually were placed on the corner of the ad, Mai-Lee did not recognize that the ad was designed to advertise Virginia Slims cigarettes and later explained that she felt especially pleasant before she knew it was a cigarette ad. She thought the ad was about selling women's clothes or jewelry. After learning that the ad was for cigarettes, Mai-Lee added, "If you smoke Virginia Slims' cigarettes, you will look young, slim, and beautiful." Mai-Lee's interpretation of the ad could be the creator's intended message.

Another student, Linda, immediately knew that her ad was about cigarettes. She said, "The ad is a Merit cigarette ad. There is a stage with an opera performer attached to a rope and pulley, and a man is trying to pull her up. It is looking pretty hard for him because the performer is very heavy." The slogan and Merit logo appear on the lower right corner of the ad. The slogan reads, "Lighten up with Merit." According to Linda, the ad conveys "a sense of fleeting relief of some sort of stress. " Linda pointed out that she saw this type of ad in magazines like Newsweek and that the message of the ad is, "You should smoke these cigarettes because either they are light or they will make you feel light, happier or something to that effect."

Another student, Suzy, tried to figure out the intended message of her chosen ad. Describing her Marlboro ad, Suzy said, "There's a rodeo and people are having fun. One of the men [cowboys] is smoking, while another one is looking at him. The ad goes out to people who want to be cowboys. I think the ad would make people think that smoking is 'cool.' Make people feel fit-in, and look mature." This cigarette-ad analysis activity allowed the students to examine how the tobacco industry associates its products with healthy imagery through cigarette advertising. The students seemed to have no trouble articulating the intended and implicit messages of a cigarette ad. Nevertheless, it is likely that they might fail to scrutinize the negative aspects of smoking if not guided to analyze the ad critically.

Connections Between Cigarette Ads and Activist Art

After the students finished their addeconstruction writing activity, they gathered in a semi-circle. To inform students of the strat\egic similarity between cigarette ad and activist art, they looked at works by contemporary artists-Barbara Kruger and a group of contemporary female activist artists who call themselves the Guerrilla Girls-who have used graphic design techniques to raise issues of gender and race. In order to reach a mass audience, both Kruger and the Guerrilla Girls have expressed their opinions and criticisms of gender and racial issues in the artworld and society through mainstream media such as street billboards.

As digital images of Barbara Kruger's work were projected, the class continued a more in-depth discussion about the relationship between cigarette ads and activist art.2 Thus, activist art, like commercial advertising, recognizes the power of mass media in contemporary society and the ways in which images and language from television, films, the Internet, newspapers, and magazines serve as key conduits through which modern citizens learn about the world.

After looking at this activist work, the students discussed the projected digital cigarette ads and responded to questions about the components used to create them. Mohan replied, "Writing, characters, colors, and a slogan." Suzy elaborated, "There's a brand name, Parliament; a slogan suggests that smoking is so wonderful; also, some people relax in swimsuits. The ad uses brand name, logo, slogan, human characters, and images." The students noticed that slogans also appeared in the activist art and recognized the similarities in both art forms. Like activist art, an advertisement is composed of imagery, logo, slogan, character, and company or organization name. To motivate the students' active participation in and experience of the power of a slogan, the students then guessed the possible commercial product as its slogan was read. Student participation intensified when they heard familiar brand names such as Nike, McDonald's, Maxwell House, Wendy's, M&Ms, Burger King, AT&T, Hallmark, and Coca-Cola. When the students heard the slogan, "Mmm, mmm, good," they burst into laughter and immediately recognized it as Campbell Soup.

Techniques of Visual Manipulation

Activist visual artists and cigarette advertising designers incorporate similar visual techniques to send their intended messages to a target audience. Their ultimate goal is to convince the target audience to change its behavior or consume the advertised product. Both advertisers and activist artists purposefully arrange textual and visual elements of a work to achieve persuasiveness (i.e., convincing people to believe what they want them to believe). Cigarette-ad designers are experts in the use of art elements and design principles. The students observed how they were used in a cigarette ad. For example, Linda said, "Lighting is used for emphasis. The people are emphasized because there is a spotlight on them." Mai-Lee added "There's movement on the stage" and "the contrasting colors help the characters be seen, the use of movement in the text makes it stand out more."

Cigarette-ad designers use varied techniques, either visual or nonvisual, for creating an advertisement that attempts to persuade teenagers to consume the harmful products. When youth are targeted by a cigarette ad, the ad is mainly designed to manipulate their feelings and perceptions, and it associates the advertised product with the youth's desired personalities or qualities of life. As cigarette ads were shown, the students responded to the following statement: "Based on what the ad tells you, if you used the advertised product you would...?" Beth said, "Have fun, feel good, and look cool and mature." David added, "Feel happy, pleasure, joyful, and maybe fit-in." Indeed, to entice teen customers into smoking, the tobacco industry sets up hooks such as using popular teen idols-singers, actors or athletes-to endorse cigarettes, transforms animals into cool cartoon characters, or creates ideal/ fantasized circumstances to market the advertised cigarettes. These cigarette hooks suggest that smoking is stylish, cool, exotic or romantic, relaxing, socially acceptable, and a symbol of independence.

In cigarette ads, many desirable outcomes result for those who choose to smoke. In response to the question, "Did the tobacco industry tell the truth about its products?", Beth said, "There's a text box at the bottom of the ad that tells people about the risks of smoking, but it's so small. The main idea focuses on positive sides of smoking."

To the question, "How did it make you feel when someone around you was smoking?", Mai-Lee replied, "It makes me cough a lot and feels hard to breath[e]." David stated, "When I entered a smoking area, I would feel dizzy." Mohan articulated, "Sometimes I get annoyed by people who smoke. I just don't like it. I feel smokers were enjoying themselves, but jacking-up their health at the same time." Beth joined in, "Smoking is gross and can eventually kill you at a young age. It makes your clothes and house smell. Your clothes, car, house, and furniture all smell like smoke."

In this type of student-teacher dialogic interaction, students might respond to the questions based on what they thought the instructor wanted to hear. Yet, this dialogic activity could increase, to a certain extent, students' levels of consciousness about cigarette smoking. Unquestionably, cigarette ads strive to cover up the reality that smoking is associated with a number of diseases such as hearing and hair loss, heart problems, vision problems, increased headaches, arthritis, gum diseases, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer's, and that cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 400,000 deaths every year in the United States. That is, one in every five deaths is related to cigarette smoking (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2002).

Studio Work and Critique

After each weekly class dialogic session, the students continued the studio project. They redesigned the analyzed ads with Adobe Photoshop and used the same advertising techniques or strategies learned by unveiling the truth about cigarette smoking to manipulate the textual and visual components of the chosen ads; the students kept in mind a number of advertising design elements discussed in the class, for example, subject matter, context, art elements, design principles, images, logos, slogans, and intended and implicit messages. They were told to re-create their own cigarette ads using their aesthetic sensitivity and a sense of social responsibility.

A peer critique followed the completion of the studio production. During the peer critique, students explored works of art made by their peers through oral group presentations. In groups of three, all members of each group first wrote down their initial reactions to the examined work on Post-It Notes and then attached the notes around the edges of the work displayed on the computer monitor. The groups were reminded that their reactions could take the form of words, thoughts, comments, subject matter, media, meanings, or general observations. Then, the group members brainstormed more reactions or observations. Finally, each group organized its reactions into summative sentences and presented them to the class.

Linda redesigned a Merit cigarette ad that featured a stage performance. In the original ad, the background of the stage is a blue sky with cotton-like white clouds. In the center of the stage, an overweight woman in Roman gladiator costume is attached to a rope and pulley. One man next to her is grasping the rope trying hard to pull her up. Her body is half way from the ceiling. A slogan, "Think light," appears on the top right side close to the characters, and another, "Lighten up with Merit," is placed on the lower left next to the Merit cigarette package.

Initially, prior to ad deconstruction, Linda had described the ad as depicting cigarettes as either tasting light or making people feel light or happier. In her redesigned work (see Figure 1), Linda replaced the female character with a whole body skeleton hanging from the ceiling and created a gloomy atmosphere on the stage. In the studio critique, one group of students gave their first reactions to Linda's work using such words as skeleton, bony, different, Merit, think light, lighten up with Merit, stage, cool, dead, dark, being hung, smoky, mysterious, cigarette, puffy, repetition, pulling, and sky. The group summarized the discussion as follows: "There is a guy who is pulling on a rope on which a skeleton is being hung. We think the guy is showing the skeleton on stage to tell smokers and non-smokers this is what you will be if you smoke. We think it's supposed to be a message of fear, to scare smokers. The ad uses a kind of fog or mist to make it smoky and mysterious."

Suzy re-created a Camel cigarette ad that features an African American female singer wearing a sexy dress in a piano nightclub. The singer looks relaxed in the midst of signing and smoking. Her fingers hold a lit cigarette with smoke billowing into the air. The slogan, "Pleasure to burn," appears right above the singer.

Suzy distorted the singer's face and inserted some grey hair on her head. She also enlarged the singer's abdomen area as if the singer were pregnant. Students in another group gave their first reactions to Suzy's work during the studio critique. They used words like blue, old lady, unhappy, fat, smoking, singing, coughing, pregnant, spilling, gray and white hair, ashes, shadows, balance, shape, bright, color, and emphasis. The students interpreted Suzy's work as by saying, "The picture has lots of blue and emphasis. The character doesn't look very happy. She is an old, pregnant lady, coughing because of smoke. We think she might be pregnant because of the surgeon's warning. She looks like she's getting really old because of smoking." In a previous class session, most students reacted positively to the original version of Suzy's redesigned a\d. Suzy's work led the students to re-examine their perceptions of this ad and to further confront smoking-related health issues.

Beth analyzed a Marlboro cigarette ad that features a pair of cowboy boots. The boots were apparently arranged to represent the letter M in Marlboro. For her redesigned ad (see Figure 2), Beth kept the boots the way they were, but added a decomposed human body in the background to make an appalling statement about the consequence of consuming Marlboro cigarettes. Most students thought that Beth's work delivered a horrendous message about cigarette smoking.

Conclusion

Visual images are not simply embodiments of social reality; they are indeed ideological sites embedded with powerful discursive sociopolitical meanings that exert strong influences on the ways in which people live their lives. The AdDeconstruction Project challenged students to integrate aesthetic sensitivity and social awareness and equipped them with critical knowledge necessary to live in a world of commercial image-saturated consumerism within which they are profit-motivated targets. Through the dialogic, writing, and production activities in the Ad-Deconstruction project, the students explored connections between activist art and advertising, experienced basic creative processes and techniques used for cigarette advertising, and learned about critical messages concerned with smoking.

At the end of the workshop, the students' redesigned cigarette ads were publicly displayed at a university-based art gallery. To my surprise, many parents voiced their support for such a socially meaningful art project. The AdDeconstruction Project has allowed both the public and students to experience the power of visual imagery and how art can be utilized as a sociopolitical instrument to promote an awareness of unethical social practices.

Both advertisers and activist artists purposefully arrange textual and visual elements of a work to achieve persuasiveness (i.e., convincing people to believe what they want them to believe).

Figure 1. Student work.

Linda replaced the female character with a whole body skeleton hanging from the ceiling and created a gloomy atmosphere on the stage.

Figure 2. Student work.

Smoking causes vision problems, hair loss, yellow teeth, wrinkles, gum disease, and ostioporosis.

For her redesigned ad, Beth kept the boots the way they were, but added a decomposed human body in the background to make an appalling statement about the consequence of consuming Marlboro cigarettes.

ENDNOTES

1 To protect the participants' identities, the names used in this article are pseudonyms.

2 Activist art, by definition, is a processoriented, art form that incorporates aesthetic means to address issues of sociopolitical significance with the goal of enacting social changes. It is an art form typically displayed at public sites through media advertising such as billboards, posters, flyers, and newsprints.

REFERENCES

Barrett, T. (2000). Studies invited lecture: About art interpretation for art education. Studies in Art Education, 42(1), p.5-19.

Broudy, H. (1972). Enlightened cherishing: An essay on aesthetic education. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (1994). Preventing tobacco use among young people: A report of the surgeon general. Retrieved January 20,2003, from http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/ sgryth2.htm

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2002). Targeting tobacco use: The nation's leading cause of death. Retrieved January 12, 2003, from http://www.cdc.gov/ nccdphp/aag/aag_osh.htm

Considine, D. M., & Haley, G. E. (1999). Visual Messages: Integrating imagery into instruction (2nd ed.). Englewood, CO: Teacher Ideas Press.

Couch, R. A. (1995). Challenging popular media's control by teaching critical viewing. Abstract retrieved January 20, 2003, from ERIC database (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED391501).

Duncum, P. (2001). Visual culture: Developments, definitions, and directions for art education. Studies in Art Education, 4.2(2), 101- 102.

Evans, N., Farkas, A., Gilpin, E., Berry, C., & Pierce, J. (1995). Influence of tobacco marketing and exposure to smokers on adolescent susceptibility to smoking. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 87(20), 1538-45.

Fischer, P. M., Schwartz, M. P., Richards, J. W. Jr., Goldstein, A. O., & Rojas, T. H. (1991). Brand logo recognition by children aged 3 to 6 years. Journal of the American Medical Association, 266(22), 3145-48.

Freedman, K. (1994a). About this issue: The social reconstruction of art education. Studies in Art Education, 35(3), 131-134.

Freedman, K. (1994b). Interpreting gender and visual culture in art classrooms. Studies in Art Education, 35(S), 157-170.

Kellner, D. (1988). Reading images critically: Toward a postmodern pedagogy. Journal of Education, 170(3), 31-52.

National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids. (n.d.). Tobacco marketing and kids. Retrieved January 20,2003, from http:// tobaccofreekids.org/reports/ smokescreen

Pierce, J., Choi, W., Gilpin, E., Farkas, ?., & Berry, C. (1998). Tobacco Industry Promotion of Cigarettes and Adolescent Smoking. Journal of the American Medical Association, 279(J), 511-515.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (1973, February 02). Research planning memorandum on some thoughts about new brands of cigarettes for the youth market. Retrieved January 20, 2003, from http:// www.rjrtdocs.com/rjrtdocs/ search. wmt?tab=search

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (1988, December 09). Imagine a five- year old child, who will be a future customer of your cigarettes in the next few years. Retrieved January 20,2003, from http:// www.rjrtdocs.com/rjrtdocs/ search.wmt?tab=search

Stokrocki, M. (2001). Go to the mall and get it all: Adolescents' aesthetic values in the shopping mall. ArI Education, 54(2), 18-23.

Weinstein, H. (1998, January 15). R.J. Reynolds targeted kids, records show. The Los Angeles Times, p. 1.

Sheng Kuan Chung is assistant professor of art education at the University of Houston, Houston, Texas. E-mail: skchung@uh.edu

Copyright National Art Education Association May 2005

Source: Art Education

More News in this Category