I chose this True Religion ad for my deconstruction project. Honestly, as I worked on my essay  I can see why we were limited to 2 pages tops. I could have written a whole research paper on this ad. As I looked at the ad I began to see how it appealed to a certain race and class. While promoting jeans, a truly authentic American garment,  the ad also seems to be promoting the idea of what it means to be American; looks, dress, lifestyle. The appeal of youth, health, beauty, sexuality balanced with the laid back unfocused background seems to suggest that this is what American life is all about, what the True Religion can give you.

While working through this assignment, I could not help but think of the Jenkins article and his reasons as to why we should teach media literacy, more specifically  the challenges of transparency and ethics. As young people begin to engage more and more with new media technologies these two challenges will have to be addressed, transparency and the authenticity of what is being interacted with along with how to encourage young people to be ethical in their decision-making (Jenkins, 2006).

I also began to think about the readings by Lankshear and Knobel (2011) and their suggestions of active citizenship and critical media, "We now understand literacies as socially created constitutive elements  of larger human practices-discourse-that humans construct around their myriad purposes and values" (p. 76).  The educational goal should be to promote active citizenship (Lanshear and Knobel, 2011). If as educators we recognize and embrace this notion then it is our responsibility to effectively teach young people about new media technologies.

References

 Jenkins, H.J.(2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Retrieved from:https://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2011). Literacies Social, Cultural and Historical Perspectives. New York, NY: Peter Lang.