“… I think we don’t need to think about it…”

So said one of my students about the depiction of gender roles and sexuality in advertising.

To which my response was, “We don’t have to think about anything, but is there any reason we shouldn’t? Do you think people should have fewer critical reading skills when it comes to media?” I put it in slightly different words, so I’d sound less, er, irate that I do there. But really, it was a strange moment. I know that, “I think we don’t need to think about it,” isn’t probably intended in the way it comes across — this was a comment in the writer’s  foreign language, after all — but I do find it baffling, this urgency to not think about things.

Or maybe she was trying to say, “It’s boring and pointless.” Which it may well become, after a certain point. But one needs to have thought about it for a while before I think it’s sensible to chuck it aside. Especially when one has signed up for a course on Media.

Or, well, when one has signed up for my course on Media, anyway.

2 thoughts on ““… I think we don’t need to think about it…”

  1. But Gordo, why should I think about the messages the media sends, when media execs and advertisers have already thought so long and hard about the content they produce? They really worked hard on it, so I think it’s OK to just trust their judgment. Surely you don’t think that they have something other than my best interest and edification in mind as they make choices about what to create and circulate?

  2. *G* Exactly. Hell, I feel tempted to print that out and attach it to the paper… except I suspect it’d be a little mean. I may try make the point in a nicer way.

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