Media theory chocolate metaphors
Following a considerable and ongoing response to my damning Media Studies 2.0 malteser metaphor (in Key Themes), I’ve decided it’s simply unfair to pour chocolate over only one perspective, and so - with some reluctance but a smidgen of pleasure - here, in tabulation, are some alternatives posited by members of the great media student/academic fraternity (further suggestions most welcome):
| Product | Analogy | |
| Media 2.0 | Malteser | Lightweight and hollow to its core |
| Medium theory | Milky Way | Forget the Gutenberg Galaxy, bring on the McLuhan Milky Way (a further extension of our celestial selves) |
| Political economy | Mars | Corporate, American, and imperialist in the extreme |
| Postcolonalism | Turkish Delight | Pandering to an Orientalist discourse of primal exoticism (but if Turkey joins the EU, read: Bounty) |
| Critical race theory | Fruit and Nut | Remember that ad? Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut-case – and looks distinctly African-Caribbean too |
| Psychoanalysis | Flake | Phallic, bordering on castration complex |
| Consumerism | Wispa | Back by popular demand – now that’s people power! |
| Postmodernism | Aero | Full of air – the ideal simulacrum of a real chocolate bar |
| Feminism | Yorkie | Patriarchal masculinity in supremacy |
| Postfeminism | Yorkie | Ironic masculinity in crisis |
| Semiotics | Smarties | Only Smarties have the answer – with the added exception of the Barthesian semiotician |
| Behavourism | After Eight | Or should that be After Nine (the watershed) |
