Analysis of Media Text #1
Analyse Media Text Using the Five Key Concepts
LEGO Club Magazine 
#4 Media texts reflect special interests (commercial, ideological, political).
Lego Club Magazine is not really a “magazine” at all. It is a twenty page, glossy, colourful advertisement for various Lego products created by Lego for young (ages 8-12), upper-middle class, and white males. The contest winners on pages 14-15 are all white males and the price of Lego kits (i.e. Lego Star Wars Death Star II $399.00) would exclude lower income families. The fact that media “intended for an audience is created for profit” is obvious in this “magazine” to critical viewers of media text. Perhaps not too obvious for the middle school students I teach.
My experience with teaching Media Literacy in a middle school for the first time last year has taught me that students enjoy a great deal of media text but have very little experience in deconstructing and analyzing any of it. All
5 Key Concepts, as well as the three sides of the
Media Triangle, need to be discussed and taught about through a very large selection of examples (i.e. magazines, posters, video game sleeves, ads, commercials, etc.). Lego Magazine is just one example.
Lego Club Magazine is an excellent example of a media text which reflects commercial interests. Some of the questions students can explore include:
Who created this text and why? It will be obvious to the students that LEGO created the text but some deeper analysis will be needed to uncover the reasons why. Students will begin to see that the “magazine” is created to entertain and inform its young audience; however, they will soon realize that the primary goal of the magazine is to sell more Lego kits. It is a catalogue
dressed as a magazine.
Who benefits if the message is accepted? I would explain to my students how much my eight year old son loves getting his Lego Club Magazine in the mail. It makes him feel grown-up getting mail sent directly to him. He often visits the website,
http://www.legoclub.com/, as well for online games and information about new products. Therefore, he does benefit from the magazine. However, it is the company which benefits, actually profits, if the message in the magazine is accepted. The message being, you need more Lego kits to be happy.
Finally, we must look at
Who may be disadvantaged? The disadvantaged are those who are left out. Lego used to be plastic blocks that all children used, with their imagination, to create all kinds of structures. That has changed with the integration of Lego and a large number of commercial movies (i.e. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Sponge Bob). Now Lego sells expensive Lego kits which exclude a large group of children whose families cannot afford a $69.99 Lego Ferrari kit. Females are also excluded from this “club” because all of the products are geared towards typical male interests (i.e. Lego Racers, Lego City, and Lego Castle). It is ironic that during my school’s First Lego League Robotics Competition it was the two girls on the team of mostly boys that did the best in the competition because of their problem-solving and communication skills. Lego is missing out by excluding this market of consumers.
Use the activity sheet Media Studies Triangle to analyse various media text....
