blackberry commercial

In Douglas Kellner’s article “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture,” he explains the many aspects of interpreting media. Kellner says, “Learning how to read, criticize, and resist socio-cultural manipulation can help empower oneself in relation to dominant forms of media and culture” (10). Some individuals follow mainstream culture, while others are a part of subculture groups who resist the mainstream. Cultural studies involve studying production and political economy of a media text, using textual analysis, and taking note of audience reception and use of media culture. Different forms of media, such as television and music, follow particular, standard guidelines and it is useful to realize this when analyzing something. Textual analysis involves interpreting meanings from media texts based on who is using the media text and what kind of people or situations are depicted in the media text. Understanding audience reactions to media texts requires the reactions of audience members and the effects of the media upon them.

An example of a media text that can be studied is a television commercial, in this case an advertisement for T-Mobile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2jje8MS0Nw
A commercial is produced according to an allotted amount of time, in this case about thirty seconds. The advertisement must be squeezed into a few seconds in between programming and other commercials, so the producers make the most of the space. This calls for quick characterization of the people represented in the ad. After a few seconds, we know that the man and the woman are a couple who are probably married, and the woman is dragging him around to a bunch of stores while she shops. The hope is probably that people watching the commercial can either relate to the woman buying shoes and jewelry or to the man who is not enjoying the experience. The humor of the commercial is in the man’s inability to ever say the right thing so his wife constantly disagrees with him. This commercial depicts women as independent and slightly irritating. The woman is given crazy curly hair, an annoying voice, and she talks for her own benefit. Men are depicted as more passive (she disagrees with him… “Great.”), and also more laid back in appearance (messy hair and scruffy beard). He finally catches on to his wife’s patterns in the last scene and says the opposite of what she expects, but it implies that it took him a while to catch on. There is one other man who makes an appearance in this commercial, and he is depicted as a homosexual. He speaks in a distinctive tone of voice and has thick lips (“Wedge.”), clearly stereotyping him as gay. This makes another point that if a man is not gay, he would not understand the woman’s fashion dilemmas.
The commercial is probably trying to say that with the T-Mobile phone you can’t make a wrong choice (Red or blue blackberry? Either way, he gets it right). The audience reception of the commercial and the message would differ depending if the viewer sympathized with the man or woman, if he thought it was entertaining or just stupid, and if he was convinced to buy the product. The company won’t be selling the product to anyone who is offended by an advertisement, or even annoyed by it. Based on a couple of comments left on the youtube clip of the commercial (I don’t know who takes the time to do that), audiences find the ad humorous. They like the way the actor talks, or they like the concept.