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The effect of magazine cover on society

Although the forming of a culture is complex, media have an important impact on culture, especially in a society which its culture is in conflict or being shaped. “The media have the power to engage and entertain, to create and destroy, to open spaces and to close them” (Grossberg et al, 2006:28). During the period of 1920s to 1930s, while the United States was focusing on forming its own American culture, there was a series of sharp culture conflicts between new and old, fashionable and traditional, western and eastern in old China. The Young Companion and TIME, two famous magazines, both had a significant impact on their target society. To discuss the impact on media and how it shapes a society, this essay is going to analyse the cover of both magazines. It is necessary to give a short introduction of TIME and The Young Companion before study.

The Young Companion was a large comprehensive picture magazine in the period of Republic of China. It was established by Liande Wu in Shanghai, 1926. The propose of the publication was “popularize the education, develop the culture” (Liande Wu,1928), aiming to be the mentor of readers.

TIME was established by Henry .R. Luce and Briton Haddon in March, 1923. Nowadays, it is published by Warner in New York, voicing opinions about the international issues and reporting the international event. In addition, the aim is to help the people who are busy understanding the big affairs in the world in general (Wang, 2009).

According to Grossberg et al (2006:168), the text itself offers certain organizations and structures of meaning that can be identified. As a process of coordinate messages, layout is the final process of packing messages and author's subjective intention into a “code” (Grossberg et al, 2006:144). To identify the structure of the two magazines, deconstructing the layout is necessary.

In the earlier period, The Young Companion placed texts on the top of the whole cover and the other space was the picture of a female character. But after the 25th issue, the cover girl’s photo filled the entire cover with text marked in an appropriate location. After the reform of cover, The Young Companion showed its intention more clearly, which means to emphasize the picture and character.

|[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |
|2nd vol |1st vol |12th vol |
|[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |
|51st vol |74th vol |79th vol |

Differ from The Young Companion, after a reform in 1938, the cover of TIME placed a bigger picture under the simple title "TIME" instead of having laces at border. This reform made the magazine more succinct and serious. In addition, it made the character more noticeable.

|[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |
|5th Sep. 1925 |3rd May 1926 |2nd Oct. 1933 |

|[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |
|1st Jan 1940 |28th Aug. 1939 |31 May 1939 |

Although these magazines changed their cover pattern differently, one intention was the same, which means character became the most important role in the cover. This emerges the codes more clearly. To further analyse those codes, what characters were chosen and how magazines represented their characters could be two acceptable accesses.

Most characters of The Young Companion were female, in the whole 173 published journals, only 11 characters were men. "The cover of The Young Companion had always been a young lady, famous female movie star or female athlete, when met the needs of the war of resistance against Japan, characters all changed into female soldiers or war-related women."(Ma, 2002) According to Zhu (2002), these women are modern women in that time. The images of those cover women was fashionable, healthy, independent, modern and open (Zhu, 2002).Zhu (2002) stated that those images helped constructed a diversified and open society.

In contrast to cover ladies in The Young Companion, TIME was inclined for influential and successful man, such as politicians, writers and artists. Such as Melvin A. Traylor, James J. Davis, Alfred E. Smith. However, there were still some women who must be excellent or famous on the cover like Queen Elizabeth II. In addition, there was always an introduction of the character under the picture. This "cover story" emphasized both news and history(Wang, 2009), leading society be interested in the present and past of polity and art of the world.

|[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |
| 30th July 1928 | 1st Dec. 1930 | 27th Jun. 1932 |

The method of representing magazines characters is another major issue. “Most of the time, when people reflect on their interpretation of a text, they focus either on the themes or on the symbols that are most obvious in the text” (Grossberg et al, 2006:168). Character itself is only information, an aggregate of concepts. To make character into a code, camera work and techniques were used to emphasize the themes. For instance, The Young Companion's cover ladies never faced the camera straight in early The Young Companion volumes. As time passed, though they could face to camera as they look at readers directly, their heads were slightly lowered. Later, cover ladies were finally able to face to camera and laugh with their teeth shown. In addition, their carriage was changed from shy and formal to free and casual while the background had changed from an elegance room to a panoramic view of the outdoor. The trend of evolvement was from single to multiplicity, from tradition to modern (Wang, 2009:3). In 1920s China, this deliberate intention played a leadership role in culture conflict by influencing The Young Companion's audiences. It is similar to The Renaissance. They used a modern pattern to present an ancient aesthete standard in order to against the conservatives in that time. One of The Young Companion's cover lady shared a same image with an ancient poem "when she smiles, I can see her teeth like white jade(Ying, 2004:95)".Changes in TIME were much simpler. As techniques developed, black and white photograph replaced portrait, then chromotype was used instead of black and white photograph. Those obvious changes in cover picture give audiences an idea that techniques can be used in everyday life and they are useful and have benefits.

After studied the type, chosen character, camera work and techniques used in cover of The Young Companion and TIME, a series of advanced analysis are able to reach. Those analyses will attempt to figure out whether the social impact of The Young Companion and TIME have any identities. In another word, a series of theories will be used to analyse whether The Young Companion and TIME shaped society by same basic theories.

"Speech, consisting of Names or Apellations, and their Connexion; whereby men register their Thoughts" (Hobbes, 2010:18). If consider characters, camera work and layouts as names, cover can be regarded as a speech. Combining all those three elements studied above, cover can impact people more than every its element's individually. "The fact is that people do not find meanings in the world, nor are meanings already inside their heads. People make meaning. They make multiple and often competing meanings" (Grossberg et al, 2006:140). Although its material is from real world, cover is a made meaning after all those particular characters which were chosen with camera work use and layout manage. Cover becomes an aggregation that highly unites the intention of every including code. Due to the large amount of covers, readers can only remember a few of them. Thus the real element that impact culture and society cannot be cover itself but the universal behind all those covers. "A universal will be anything which may be shared by many particulars" (Russell, 2011:75.76). For example, universal of The Young Companion includes concepts like modern lifestyle, anti-tradition, fashion and feminism while TIME stands for political power and culture contribution.

According to the theory of mass society (Grossberg et al, 2006:51), people in an urban, mechanical society constitute a society only by formal, contractual relations. These two elements can be explained as the concept that people cognized from universal. Bon (2007:127) states that because the crowd need a leader to guide them and this leader can be replaced by magazines though the effect will be weaken. By producing universals, media can shape the aiming society in a gentle and potential way.

After studied the cover of The Young Companion and TIME, a conclusion can be reached that in a particular social context, media can shape culture and society by providing universals. All these universals and the connection between universals construct the structure of a media text. This structure can impact on people's sense about what should people do and how should people behave. But according to Piaget (2010:105), once a structure is completed people will negate the essential element or at least a necessary one. Thus the real impact of media will be one major impact, multiple impacts including the opposite to the major impact instead of one simple trend. This is reason why media texts can coexist and societies still have cultural diversity.

Reference list:
Bon, G.L (2010) The Crowd. Translated from the French by Feng K. Guangxi: Guangxi Teacher University.
Cheng J. (2004) The Explanation of The Book of Songs. Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House
Hobbes T. (2010) Leviathan. Translated from the English by Li S. and Li T. Beijing: The Commercial Press
Grossberg L. et.al (2006) Media Making :Mass Media In A Popular Culture. America: SAGE Publications
Piaget J. (2010) Le Structuralisme. Translated from the French by Ni L. and Wang l. Beijing: The Commercial Press
Russell. B (1912) The Problems Of Philosophy. London: Williams and Norgate
TIME (2011) Time Covers [Online], Available from: [27th, Nov. 2011]
Wang Q. (2009) The analysis to TIME ‘s report [Online], Available From:
< http://wenku.baidu.com/view/07eb8af47c1cfad6195fa700.html > [24th, Nov. 2011]
Yang,C. (2004) Interpretation the cover of The Young Companion [Online], Available From:
< http://wenku.baidu.com/view/fb8df8fec8d376eeaeaa31be.html > [25th, Nov. 2011]

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