Above are screenshots from Time Magazine’s
website, where each row is the cover of different versions of the magazine published
around the world that week. A trend begins to appear when you compare what the
cover article is for the American readers of Time Magazine to the cover
articles in Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. These screenshots illuminate a
tendency of what the American version of Time Magazine is choosing to inform
the American people about. While I would not go as far to say that the United
States has a censorship issue, I would assert that Time Magazine is placing
their emphasis in the wrong place.
The power that Time magazine has is far
reaching. They have the ability to influence the thoughts and conversations of
people around the globe. What they choose to place on their covers will be seen
by countless people. From the trend noticed above, Time Magazine seems to be
making a conscious effort to emphasize issues that are less globally focused. It
is important to mention that the US addition of Time is not excluding the cover
articles of the other additions. To clarify, the September 16th,
2013 addition of the American Time Magazine where the cover article is “It’s
Time to Pay College Athletes” also contains the article “The World According to
Vladimir Putin”, so this is not an issue of censorship. However, it does reveal
what the US Time Magazine decides to highlight.
This seems to be less of an issue of Time
Magazine trying to keep Americans ignorant of major world topics but rather an
attempt on their part to simply sell more magazines, the underline goal of a
business. If that is true, these screenshots are a pretty revealing peek into
American values, caring more about issues relevant to our own lives rather than
topics pertaining to the rest of the world. In fact, much of American media,
including magazines, tends to revolve around American issues, especially
celebrities. The prevalence of celebrities in American media—Keeping up with
the Kardashians, TMZ, and People Magazine come to mind—propagates an unhealthy
obsession over celebrities. This issue becomes especially repulsing when you
consider how much relevant and interesting material there is to talk about.
An ad campaign in Canada designed by the
charity WoodGreen, an organization that helps single mothers get on a path
towards self-sufficiency, wanted to demonstrate what types of issues are
actually worthy of being on the covers of magazines. They had posters
throughout the Toronto area with images of what seems like normal magazine
covers. However, there was one major difference that made these magazines stand
out. The covers had statements such as “Tanya Tries to Avoid Eviction” or “No
Money to Pay the Rent” rather than the typical fixation on the lives of celebrities.
This advertisement calls attention to the
ridiculous values of North Americans, which should be realigned to care more
about the underprivileged in our society as well as the other countries and
communities who go through their own problems and deserve our attention.
I really enjoyed the part of your post where you mentioned the WoodGreen ad campaign. I would much rather read about the struggles of the average human, to then relate their lives back to mine instead of comparing me and celebrity by saying that we both shop at a grocery store. It's funny how obsessed Americans are with famous people. Most of them didn't earn their way to being famous through hard work, and that's what Americans should be talking about, the American Dream and their achievements. In these articles the WoodGreen would supposedly make there should be stories of American actually achieving the american dream. We dream about these celebrities so much that readers of US and People magazine will being to feel bad about themselves because they cannot be as "perfect" as the people on the cover of the magazine
ReplyDeleteThis post seems to show America's social fixation on the upper class. I have always thought the idealization of celebrities was a little ridiculous, but I feel with this perspective, it could even be detrimental to the society. While from a structural functionalist standpoint, fixation on celebrities is a form of entertainment that allows escape from the mundane hum of everyday life, from a conflict perspective, we are keeping the upper class in power by this fixation. As people are trying to escape from their oppression, they actively keep themselves oppressed. Perhaps if we executed WoodGreen's model, then the lower class would no longer be oppressed and have a higher morale to move up socially and economically.
ReplyDeleteI found this post very interesting for a variety of reasons, and you did a great job of bringing attention to what magazines try to sell us and what we in turn chose to buy. It seems to me that as Americans we have different value structures then the rest of the world. Although in most “developed” countries there is a fascination with celebrity that rivals and in some cases exceeds our own fascination with celebrity. In the U.K. for example, tabloids are everywhere and sell just as well if not better then they do in America. I am hesitant to call this interest in celebrity an American problem and would rather classify it as a developed/post-industrial nation problem. This however does not account for the differences between the Time magazine covers. Perhaps in America we are more accepting of entertainment and journalism going hand in hand. Our twenty four hour news cycle forces companies like Fox, MSNBC, and CNN to fill in gaps in real news with “fluff.” Networks such as CNN broadcast worldwide, yet the stories they cover and the amount of “fluff” differs outside the United States. It may be that people outside of America just are not as accepting of entertainment infiltrating their news. This might explain why Time alters their magazine covers for a worldwide audience in order to appeal to a broad international demographic.
ReplyDeleteIt's strange how ads can tell us about our own culture. We're shown tons of professionally designed rhetoric every day and some of it is based on intensive research. It wouldn't be too hard to find which ads were most successful in boosting sales and which backfired, which would give insight into which ads were most accepted.
ReplyDelete