Lecture 2: Understanding Media Ideology
Lecture Aims:
1. The critical definition of Ideology
2. The principles of Marxist Philosophy
3. Understanding Mass Media and its effects
This lecture was again really interesting but i found a bit more difficult to grasp, ideology is a system of beliefs made to disguise the reality of the situation, masking this reality help to re-enforce power relationships through a creation of false consciousness, the most abundant example of this is through politics where politicians disguise from the reality with hopeful ideas.
looking at the idea of capitalism, it aims to control the means of production in private hands, a market which uses money as a means of exchange and people become commodities by competition in the market. Marxism is a political manifesto which looks at turning this capitalist approach into a communist, through the concept of a Base/Superstructure. I believe the idea that they feed off one another, the way we are the base (the working class) whom are depended upon and driven by the upper class but it is a mutual benefit.
In a similar sense to the structure of the base/superstructure this image illustrates (below) the capitalist social hierarchy. This system of things can be viewed in modern day life such as religion, where it is pressured that doing work, charity and general acts of goodness will get you into heaven but is ultimately fueled by a church greed. This is reenforced by the threatening force of armies which also acts to stop domestic extremism where by the teaching and realisation of the subjects could provoke an outbreak of anti-capitalist behaviour, but because of this threat we , like in panopticism, regulate our behaviour in the idea that we are better safe in the system of things.
So ideology offers false but seemingly true resolutions to social ambience. through the media these ideas can be seen and again in the similar way of panopticism dictate our behaviour and how we interact with media itself. These systems also create specific behaviour in terms of gender roles, by dictating almost very subtly how women and men should behave, this can be seen through advertising where the role of the woman is the caretaker, the cook, the cleaner and should do these things. the role of the men is the opposite, the businessman whom bring in the money and expect the home to be taken care of by the wife, he is the dominant in the household. Advertisements strengthen capitalism through these roles by dicating women as being the objects of purchase and desirable e.g. Calvin Klein and Men being the dominent and whom should care about the figures and money.
Through the mass media capitalism and the roles of people in society have strengthened, but mass media like people changes where the punk phenomenon in the late seventies through to the eighties revolted against capitalism, in becoming like a 'fad' or becoming popular it became capitalist by buying into the punk such as t-shirts and music. Media back then suggested that was punk was wrong and has yet turned this in the twentieth century into yet again a 'fad' demonstrated in fashion and music magazines which people buy into, to conform to that look and support capitalism. Turning authentic culture into mass media, were it becomes standardised, and which alter the behaviour of people to regulate and produce docile bodies.
the lecture also looked at commodity fetishism and how through mass cultureand this idea of capitalism do we see value on something hidden in the commodity is an illusion of something that we own. These meaningless commodities are predicatable and homonogenic the way for instance popular television shows Big Brother and the X-Factor are churned out in the same format, not for talent but for the money. The way that the talent is so similar each year would lead us to think how they dictate role models and the perception of the sexes. Justin Gignacchallenged the perception of seling something as an illusion of a commodity in his Garbage of NYC collection where though the idea of owning something he creates value even though the product is something that is useless and meaningless.
[Useful External References]:
http://www.buynothingday.com/
http://www.thecommonplace.org.uk/
Socialist Appeal - http://www.facebook.com/
http://bnp.org.uk/
http://nycgarbage.com/
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