Timed Essay Question 3

 

Question 3:

Explain how magazine front covers represent social, cultural and political events. Refer to Source A to support your points.

Magazines have the ability to fully represent a lot of different issues that the world is facing including social, cultural and political events that are happening around the world.

The Big Issue is one of those magazines that try to cover a spectrum of different issues that a lot of the world are facing at the minute. Every magazine has a preferred reader and a target audience, and the Big Issue is no different, with their target audience being middle class, left winged, middle aged people. Since the Big Issue is a magazine that helps a lot of homeless people due to it being a charity (homeless people buy the magazine for £1.50 and sell if for £3 to allow them to make profits to live off). Since these people are their target audience, they tailor a lot of their writings to that audience to allow them to have a preferred reading and allows them to sell even more copies. But this also means people who support the right wing may not want to read the magazine and then end up with a oppositional reading due to it conflicting with the ideologies and political views that they believe in.

This specific cover has reference to elite persons (with the main focus being Donald Trump with others like Vladimir Putin) meaning it also has reference to elite nations like America and potentially other countries like Russia. Since the magazine is more left winged and Donald is a Republican (right wing) it is safe to assume that they are mocking him and his ability to a rule a country of the size of America. The main focus word of the front cover is ”Worst” demonstrating that bad things will happen due to him leading the country and he can make life a lot worse for others. Since there is also a picture of the globe, the implications point toward global issues instead of staying inside America. The White house can also be seen in the background of the picture which is a staple for American politics which helps reinforce the political nature of the magazine and helps foreign readers (most to all of them since the Big Issue is sold in the UK). We can also see the author of this article is Carl Bernstein who wrote an article which was one of the leading reading that one of the previous presidents, Richard Nixon, was impeached and kicked out of office. Nixon was a republican which once again reinforces the leftist views that The Big Issue has. All of these links together mainly to show the political events, like Trump being elected president, of magazines and how they can represent a lot of events in one image.

Outside of the American theme of the magazine, the front cover also covers some international politics that happen to intertwine with American politics. On top of Trump we can see the Russian president Vladimir Putin riding an eagle with lightning around him. This can be seen as mockery of the US political system since the eagle is the animal of America meant to depict their freedoms but is seen with the Russian president. All this imagery around Putin makes it seem like he is above Trump, literally and figuratively in this image, showing how he is more powerful. This links to an issue when this magazine was made with allegations that the Russians were getting involved with the American voting system for their president and is used in this front cover to undermine the American leaders and their entire system. This image could also suggest Putin’s influence over American politics and to show how another powerful country can influence another and their leader. There is also an image of a man running away from the White House looking up at Trump showing everyone’s fear towards him being president and being in power, meaning the man could be an allegorical reference to either America as a whole or just the democrats or left wing of America.

Overall, The Big Issue has the ability to present a lot of different events and ideologies in just a front cover and has clearly solidified its political standing on global events while also appealing to their target audience presumably throughout the entire paper.