Opinion: English Class &
Media Literacy:
Why are the curtains Blue?

Why do we have English classes post-elementary school? 

I’ve heard it in school, out of school, in little half-jokes online. People ask, “Why do we have to read poetry? What use can I find in complex sentences and stuffy prose?

“What will this do for me when my end goal is just to head off to work? Why do I need to know what the author is trying to convey? Why does it even matter if the curtains are blue?”

As someone who does enjoy English, I think there’s a lot more to art and language than that sort of practicality. To look at language like a blunt instrument, hard-to-handle and useless without a capitalist, monetary purpose, is to ignore how much communication is part of your daily life. Don’t you have to pick apart people’s words sometimes to understand what they are implying and not outright stating? Aren’t there always celebrities making bold assertions and endorsing under-researched products, aren’t there always brands trying to sell you something?

There are times when you really should be able to pick out raw information, intended audience, and authorial intent, in literature or real-life situations. As an example, I’ve recently seen an advertising technique utilized on TikTok that I find interesting.

Picture a girl showing off a new bag, something fun, catering to a specific aesthetic that rose to meteoric popularity only in the last few weeks. Korean streetwear, whimsigoth, coquette, Y2K bling, etcetera etcetera. Something niche, novel, and appealingly distinct.

The song in the background was recently released, there’s a dance routine to it already, and you could find yourself bopping your head to it easily. The girl is turning around to the beat, popping her hip in each direction, before she turns back to pick up her phone and make a face at the camera. The caption: “Found this super cute (insert trend here) bag but it’s crazy expensive sorry guys.”

How expensive can it really be? You find yourself intrigued. You click on the link, and the bag is selling for under $10. You look at videos advertising the bag, all with glowing reviews. Is it worth it?

Maybe you buy it immediately. What a bargain! I can’t believe she really thought it was expensive!

Or maybe you scour the comments. Maybe you find people whose bags broke within the day. They complain about exposed lining inside the bag, and uneven and messy stitching. Cheap zippers that leave a green patina residue on their fingers. Black dye on the outer leather stains everything it touches. Straps that snap with any sharp movement.

A cheap product made of cheap materials made with cheap labor. But how could you have known before reading the comments? How could you have known if you’d found the video earlier, if there weren’t any comments yet?

She appeals to familiarity by playing a familiar song, by executing a familiar routine: an outfit check. She appeals to the excitement of novelty by choosing a bag that emulates a new, fun trend, something niche that people likely wouldn’t find yet from a reputable, slower-moving brand.

Never mind that a brand producing bags so cheaply and so quickly can only be using the cheapest, most low-quality materials. Never mind that there’s likely little-to-no quality control since their only goal is to produce as much product as fast as they can. Never mind that they are absolutely outsourcing labor to countries with fewer labor laws.

Companies like Shein, for example, which became incredibly popular on TikTok, violate worker’s rights regularly. For example, “a documentary by the U.K.’s Channel 4 found that Shein employees were working 75-hour shifts with very little time off.” And beyond the damage that these videos can do to workers, they also have a very real impact on the environment. Even before the TikTok shop, in 2018 alone, “11.3m tons of textiles ended up in landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.” Many of these garments are made of polyester, acrylic, nylon, and/or polyamide, which are all different forms of plastic. What ends up in the landfill stays in that landfill, or the ocean, for hundreds to thousands of years.

These are all logical conclusions that someone could come to based on the price. But what is the video communicating with words alone?

“Found this bag” implies that she stumbled upon the bag in the TikTok Shop incidentally. What a coincidence! She must be sharing this find out of solidarity with other enjoyers of the trend, and surely not because she gets paid for every click. (Can you read my words and understand my sarcastic tone? Thank English classes!)

“Crazy expensive” is nonspecific and interesting. How expensive is crazy expensive? It appeals to anyone’s natural curiosity. And naturally, you have to click to check.

“Sorry guys” initially appeals to sympathy, acting as her apology for sharing something that might not be obtainable for her viewers. After clicking the link, however, the words are more tongue-in-cheek, more of an inside joke. Sorry for showing you a cheap bag that you probably want! 

As soon as you click on the link, you’ve played the game. But what if you knew just by looking at TikTok? What if you could piece together the ploy just by recognizing the formula, by identifying the word choices and thinly-veiled motivations?

This is media literacy, and this is what English teaches you when you pay attention.

The bag that she is selling and her words are the raw information. The intended audience is young viewers, people who would be interested in buying a cheap bag that fits into the way that they want to project themselves onto the world. They want to be the cool-girl, or the cutesy-girl, or the fun-artsy-person, and maybe this bag would help them feel like they could become that person. The authorial intent is to convince you to click on the link and hopefully buy it. All of these things can be pieced together if you look at the video with an analytical, purposeful eye.

Let’s look back at the initial questions. Why do I need English class? Or, rather, why does it matter if the curtains are blue?

The truth is: It matters that the curtains are blue because the author chose to mention the curtains and chose for them to be blue. The blue curtains only become significant, however, if you can match them with the other details to put together a whole, cohesive picture.

The girl with her bag chose the background music knowing it would attract her desired audience, just like she chose her words to mislead the viewer. When you cross-examine her words with the link, you understand what she meant to do, even if she hasn’t said it explicitly. You have successfully matched the blue curtains with the author’s intent and revealed a deeper meaning.

Thus, we come back to English class. Maybe the curtains are blue because the character is sad. Or maybe, in a more complex narrative, blue is a nostalgic color for the characters and reminds them of good times long gone, like the blue food in “Percy Jackson” novels by Rick Riordan reminds Percy Jackson of his mother. The blue curtains become a symbol of the character’s struggle, and suddenly an off-hand mention of the character glancing at the blue curtain can give the reader an insight into the character’s thoughts without the author needing to say anything else. It’s show-don’t-tell in action.

And really, that is why we need English classes. Life will not be narrated to you in a simple, perfectly detailed fashion. People hardly warn you anymore that something is an advertisement, cutting into YouTube videos with subtle segways into sponsorships, showing off brands and products in TV shows and movies with only a note in the credits to let you know it was intentional product placement. People will not always directly let you know what they are feeling, why they are behaving the way they are, or why they pick the words they do.

According to a thesis published by Frances Gibson in the spring of this year, “research shows that general reading levels in schools have decreased over time.” Children are inundated with social media posts, provided iPads as their first toys, given “dumbed down” textbooks, and are expected to hold similar reading levels as their predecessors.

We are losing progress, losing common understanding. This is why the narrative that we don’t need literary analysis is so troubling.

Will these children know when they’re being sold something? Will they know how to make informed choices? Will they know when it matters that the author made the curtain blue?

We need to learn to infer. We need to learn how to identify patterns, and how to read into the things people aren’t willing to say. We need media literacy. We need English classes.

Sources:

https://beatricebaker.com/2021/06/18/the-curtains-are-blue-for-a-reason/ 

https://medialiteracynow.org/challenge/what-is-media-literacy/ 

https://time.com/6247732/shein-climate-change-labor-fashion/ 

https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2022/06/10/letter-gen-z-tiktok-has-fast-fashion-problem

https://epublications.regis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2139&context=theses