As with everything else in life, education has its fashions. In the 1950s, economics was the hot ticket, followed a decade later by sociology. Today it is media studies, a subject that, according to statistics, is taken by more students each year at all levels.

And, just as economics and sociology were initially condemned as shallow, easy and irrelevant, so media studies is today. Any columnist looking to meet a deadline with something snappy need only fill the space between “media studies” and “trendy” with a few sour remarks before filing a piece to add to the substantial mound of silly judgements already in print.

Of course, like any other subject, media studies has its weaknesses. But it also has very great strengths, one of which can be found in the textual analysis section of the current OCR AS syllabus. Among other options, this gives teachers the opportunity to examine closely the representation of social class and sundry other dimensions of American life - the “American dream”, say, along with materialism and moral standards - in any two American films of their choice. And it gives students the chance to identify and assess meanings in popular cinema that might otherwise have escaped them entirely.

My current choice of three films (from which the students pick two for a final exam question), is Pretty Woman, To Die For and Quiz Show - for me, a fair mix, respectively, of the popular, the relatively unseen and the largely unknown, but a choice that, no doubt, would confirm some people’s opinion of media studies as more indulgence than enquiry.

However, a closer look shows each film to be crammed with enough ideas to merit a thesis, never mind an essay. Even Pretty Woman, the most well-known and nakedly commercial of the three, offers far more than first meets mind and eye. The plot, a contemporary re-working of Shaw’s Pygmalion, is simplicity itself: millionaire hires prostitute and eventually falls in love with her. A charming romantic comedy, yes, but underneath it is an absorbing appraisal of society’s double standards.

Edward, the millionaire, is an asset-stripper. He buys failing companies and, careless of consequent redundancies, breaks them up and sells them for a massive profit. As a prostitute, Vivian’s work is less concealed and, of course, less well-paid. Accordingly, she invites only public contempt. Edward, by obvious contrast, is treated with deference occasionally bordering on fear.

However, the film makes it clear that both live off immoral earnings: “You and I are such similar creatures, Vivian. We both screw people for money,” says Edward, increasingly conscious of the narrow gap between himself and his hooker. Indeed, it is debatable not only whose social circle is preferable, but also whose conduct most harms society. While Vivian carries enough condoms to service a regiment, Edward tempts and taints all around him with just a credit card.

Temptation takes many forms in Quiz Show, by far the most cerebral of the three films. Based on a scandal that rocked American television in the 1950s, the film charts the rise and fall of Charles Van Doren, a brilliant academic and WASP pin-up who is fed the answers in a networked quiz show by producers keen to displace his klutzy Jewish rival, Herbie Stempel.

Charles’s very public downfall is brought about by an ambitious but incorruptible government investigator, Dick Goodwin, who is as embarrassed by the histrionics of fellow Jew Herbie as he is dazzled by the casual intellectualism of Charlie and his family.

The rather too pat an ending only slightly mars a narrative that suggests, instead of shouts, ideas about racial affinity and animosity, class, a culture obsessed with appearance, the meaning of education in a television age and, perhaps most of all, the disastrous consequences of fame and the hunger for it. Not, you would imagine, a film to enthuse students only a few months on from GCSE. All the more surprising, not to say encouraging, that the same students should vote it the best film of the three.

In Quiz Show, Charlie prostitutes his intellect for fame, success and money. Suzanne Maretto, played by Nicole Kidman in To Die For, seeks the same goals, not with her brains but with her body. Suzanne’s determination to become a media star is such that she has her obstructive husband murdered. A conventional enough plot, you may think, but inspired direction turns it into a thoughtful indictment of the relationship between media power and material longing.

As with Quiz Show, the film’s key symbols are the camera and the television screen, through which we see characters time and again. We witness their dreams of and thoughts on the fame, glamour and riches media success can bring. The adolescents who kill Suzanne’s husband at her behest are equally obsessed with the glitterball world of media celebrity. In a blackly amusing and ironic finale, the plainest of the three teenagers inadvertently achieves the media fame that the far prettier Suzanne killed and ultimately died for. Our last glimpse of Suzanne is under a sheet of ice in the lake where she has been dumped by the killer hired by her in-laws - “looking as if she’s in a freeze-frame,” as one student observed.

What better way to describe an image that encapsulates so many of the film’s central meanings? This was just the best of many different interpretations that showed students’ eagerness to go beyond the obvious and to look for important ideas where many think they are most lacking - in modern American mainstream cinema.

This is not to imply that even the best of the three films might be judged a masterpiece but, instead, to argue that each film served as an avenue to adult and instructive examination of, among other matters, ethics, ambition, the meaning of success and the relationship between public and private morals. For this, if nothing else, hooray for Hollywood.

While the video version of each film is satisfactory, subtitles (particularly important in Quiz Show, where overlapping dialogue obscures the occasional line) and other features, such as (in Pretty Woman) the director’s audio commentary, mean that DVD versions make close study easier.Prices: Quiz Show (DVD) pound;14.99, (VHS) pound;5.99To Die For (DVD) pound;16.99, (VHS) pound;5.99Pretty Woman (DVD) pound;16.99, (VHS) pound;9.99The best website on any of the three films is the Quiz Show Scandal at www.pbs.orgwgbhamex quizhow. This contains a teacher’s guide, a transcript of a recent television documentary on the scandal and short biographies of the main characters. Film site Rotten Tomatoes at www.rottentomatoes.comm Pretty has links to several American reviews of Pretty Woman, while Christopher Tookey’s The Critics’ Film Guide (Boxtree, pound;16.99) has snippets from American and British reviews on the same film. The internet offers little of real use on To Die For, other than in the review archives of the British broadsheet press.

Laurence Alster is a lecturer in media studies at South Downs College, Portsmouth, Hampshire