Analyse why The Big Issue has used an intertextual approach on its front cover.
The Big Issue is a magazine-style newspaper that is sold by homeless people, as its strapline states, a “hand up not a hand out”. Their mission is to cultivate strong working relationships with the Big Issue vendors and connects them to services and vital bespoke support that is needed, and they do this by maintaining a wide range of working relationships with local service providers. They seek to deliver social & financial inclusion by supporting Big Issue vendors in the self-help process of buying & selling the Big Issue Magazine.
This magazine has a cover line of “Class Action; What’s School For?” that was issued between the dates of 3rd - 9th September 2018. This cover has a wide range of intertextual features that link to education (as it is the Education special). First of all, the cover consists of Harry Potter dressed in his uniform alongside his two friends: Ron and Hermione. This is a direct link to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; the place that they are educated. The school’s purpose is to “train for children with magical abilities (who may be enrolled at birth and acceptance is confirmed by owl post at age eleven)”. Rowling writes the Harry Potter novels because she thinks it’s an assertion of what children are and how the education system should handle them which is them having the ability to possess magical powers. This makes the novels optimistic as children having a magical view of the world and we should nurture this, therefore, Rowling creates hope for the vendors to have a promising future as more and more people buy the magazine from them.
Furthermore, on the front cover of the magazine, it also features Ozzy Osbourne behind the Harry Potter characters. He links to education because he has his education in Birmingham with 49 boys in one class. The only difference that he had with the other 48 boys is that he is dyslexic (a learning difficulty that causes problems of reading, writing and spelling) and the school didn’t understand this disorder. As a result, he messed around and he took a comedic role of being a joker as a coping mechanism so that he feels that there is a sense of belonging among the community of his school.
Additionally, also behind the Harry Potter characters, the audience can June Osbourne or Offred from the television series The Handmaid’s Tale. The whole plot of the drama is to portray the inequality in the education system. The education system indoctrinates individuals as it makes women into thinking that they’re second class which are also given a role to procreate and to serve men, so they are believed to follow fundamentalism that has been created by society during their time. Because of this, Offed begins to form a revolution with other women to rebel against the aspects of indoctrination, patriarchy and oppression towards women.
Finally, the whole formatting of the front cover is inspired by the television drama Grange Hill. This is centred on the fictional comprehensive school named as the title of the programme which is set in the equally fictitious North London borough of Northam. This drama dealt with school-related issues such as bullying, learning difficulties, teacher-pupil relationships and conflicts, the drama “broke new ground over the years, with the kind of hard-hitting storylines not usually seen in children’s dramas”, such as racism, teenage pregnancy, knife crime and homelessness. Therefore, it can be argued that the magazine can be seen as ground-breaking as the vendors are poor, homeless people and them selling them and earning money is them breaking the norm of their status because they are not on the street begging people for some money.
To conclude, this front cover from the Big Issue is seen to have a huge amount of intertextual references to other media outlets that all revolve around the theme of education. The front cover is deliberately designed like this so that the readers of the magazine will have a sense of achievement when they know some or all of the references which will therefore entice the public to buy more magazines.
Very clear on the intertextual references included (although at times you rely rather too much on my slides!). I'd have liked to see more discussion of how these might critique the education system- why this intertextuality? What is the story being told about education? However this is a clear essay with a good structure. V
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