Othering Task 3

Othering in the media is unfortunately something that seems to be unavoidable. Possibly because the designers of our media have no concept of the composition of their work, or because they mean to make people feel a certain way, and hope they opt for the piece or the advert that will make them feel better.

The piece that I have looked at for this case study is from the Guardian Newspaper. I noticed this while reading through, and although in the photo you can't actually read the text I will explain how this double page spread applies to othering.

On the left there is an article called 'green fashion empire to shut up to 260 stores', where Sir Phillip Green is explaining that the current economic slump is threatening our high streets and possibly causing 260 of it's shops to close down. Below this, perfectly holding up the article about our economic crisis is a Brad Pitt movie advert called 'moneyball', made of a solid green background which is very noticeably the shade of money. Then on the accompanying page an advert that takes up more than fifty percent of the space the page holds is for advertising the new iPad 2, from £399, so much for an economic crisis?

The size of these two adverts shows that the people reading this newspaper don't want to focus on the economic crisis, they would rather feel good about them selves by indulging in commodities that are priced incredibly highly.