Write an analysis of one media image of your choosing. This analysis should highlight how the intended reader/audience would construct their identity by a specific reading of the text which is based on the 'othering' of other groups or individuals.
Your analysis should evidence an understanding of the concept of 'othering' and also show some acknowledgement of how much the security of our own fragile subjectivities or identities depend on this process.
The above advertisement for Yeo Valley constructs a rather radical view on otherness. By the use of a rap in the video, Yeo Valley yoghurt has been portrayed in a completely different light to how you would usually picture it - they want to make farmers and their yoghurt seem 'cool'. At first, you only see men in the video, suggesting that the advertisement has been aimed at the male audience, in particular male farmers. However, after listening to the lyrics and watching through the advertisement to the end, a female model appears in the song, suggesting that you can be either a man or a woman and still be 'cool' when consuming Yeo Valley yoghurt.
The concept of the advertisement relies on the idea of otherness, as they have presumed that the audience can relate to this advert, whether the viewer does live on a farm or not, it makes them feel inferior to the people in the advert, as they can't have the lifestyle which those in the advertisement supposedly have. The people in the advert are particularly attractive and young farmers who can rap, glamourising the farmer lifestyle and suggesting that Yeo Valley could make you more attractive and feel younger.
Even though the advertisement has gone down a rather humorous route, and doesn't rely on being fully serious when it comes to selling the product, this helps the audience relate as they can find humour within the stereotypes of the farmers / countryside folk. The lyrics of the rap have been written to relate to this stereotype, for example "chugging cold milk, while I'm bailing hay".
"I'm in my wax coat and boots and proper farmer giles, now look you urban folks have stole our style" relates to the idea that your place in the world is limited by what you want to be as a person. What you want to be as a person is stereotyped by identities in the world and will form other people's ideas of identity. Famers, especially English farmers, are stereotypically noted to wear wax coats, caps, checkered shirts etc but this way of stereotyping the way that farmers dress all relies on the idea of radical otherness, and the idea of your identity coming from the way you have been brought up or where you live. "Culture is the framework within which our identities are formed, expressed and regulated" - Stuart Hall.
