Ideology: Ideas, Study Of Ideals Loaded Term

IDEOLOGY Ideas, study of Ideals Loaded term

• Ideology involves getting people to accept a particular way of thinking and seeing the world that makes the existing social relations seem natural. • Dominant groups in society

Accept, way of seeing, natural Patriarchy – women are weaker than men Sexuality – Gay people are not normal Race – White people are superior to other races Class – Rich people should always shape the way society operates Ethnicity – Tsongas are inferior to other ethnic groups in South Africa

• Patriarchy – Men • Sexuality – Heterosexuals • Race – White people • Class – Bourgeoisie • Ethnicity – Ngoni speaking groups

• Ideology reveals that social relations are constructed according to the ideas of dominant groups, but people come to believe and accept them. It reveals the unequal social relations.

Ideology and the media • The media is seen as supporting the ideologies of dominant groups • The media buy into the dominant ideologies and can sometimes reflect and sustain them. • Reading media texts – beyond the text, one has to study the ideologies that shape them

Example • Isidingo. • Local soap opera. • The erasure of class and race differences, and the building of a new nation that embraces the new SA • Ideology – nationalism, rainbow nation.

Ideology and representation • Representation – how language represents reality to create meaning. • The media represents reality through mediation • Mediation – interference (sb decides what goes into the production of something) • Level of mediation that ideology takes place.

Media and ideology • Take for instance, news reporting. • Angles for representation – Xenophobia. • Important to take pictures of ‘dark skinned’ people to emphasize their foreignness. • Assumption – dark skinned people are all foreigners • There is already a level of discriminatory selection. What about dark skinned SA? • What does it say about how SA’ians view dark skinned people? Why is the media reproducing such assumptions?

Ideology • Inequalities • Power • That ideas are defined according to those of the powerful. And these ideas are normally defined unequally. Only the interests of the powerful are represented

Ideology and Marxism • Developed by Karl Marx, German philosopher • Marx wanted to understand how minorities were able to maintain power and why a vast majority of people accepted a system whose consequences seemed to work against them.

The Marx questions • How do societies maintain and reproduce structures of social difference and power? • Why do some people see themselves as superior and justify their position in society? • Why do people who are subordinate accept their subordination? • How does this happen without force?

• Argument – that submission and maintenance of power structures took place at the level of ideology • That people in power used the power to represent the world in a given way to prevent other individuals and groups from obtaining a true picture of the world.

• False consciousness • The working class unable to recognize the true conditions of their existence • Because they adopted the beliefs and values of dominant classes in society • Creation of false needs to divert people’s attention away from the exploitative nature of capitalism • Ideology was a product of class – economic relations (base) with the superstructure (institutions of society such as churches, media houses, families, schools).

• For Marx, the media are willing vehicles in the reproduction of dominant ideology • However, he did not include other differences – like race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, nationality etc • He also looked at the dominant group as ‘one’ without differences • No possibilities of resistance from the masses

Louis Althusser • Ideology worked through Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) and force, through Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) to control who you were and became in society. • ISAs – church, school, family, media • RSAs were force – Police, army

• For him, ISAs were more effective in molding subjects into thinking in a particularly way • He spoke of the independence of ISAs from the economic and class interests. • ISAs manufactured ideas that were not reflective of the real conditions

• The media, as an ISA was a culprit. It hid what it did not want people to see, and presented a different reality. • Althusser argued that ideology was not false – that people’s everyday lives were structured by ideology.

Interpellation • He brought in the concept of interpellation. • ISAs position individuals through interpellation or hailing (being called up to be in a certain way). – In the church, to be the most moral person you can be – School – the best brain you can be – In the family – to relate to your parents and sibling in a certain way that make you the model child – Presupposes a kind of discipline which shows you how to be as a person

• The media also hail or call up readers and position them in relation to what they should be through products. • Adverts, for instance, continually offer individuals a clear, ideological definition of who or what they should be. • An advert of castle larger which shows muscled men after a hard day of work opening and drinking a cool bottle of beer is basically saying---- You can also do the same, reward yourself

• The Voice over in adverts – always referring to ‘you’ as a subject thus separating you as an individual, rather than a group (poor people). • Lessening your fighting power. Think of how many adverts address ‘you’. Why are they referring to ‘you’ – – – – – –

You can be part of this Your toilet can look as clean as this one Get to your nearest store You deserve the best Your baby deserves the best Your investment deserves nothing less

• Adverts sell dominant ideologies along with the products. • For instance, when a harpic advert shows us a dirty toilet that is cleaned out after using the product – Harpic is good – People of a certain class can use Harpic – not everyone has that type of toilet – we are made to feel as if we can all use Harpic, and but not all can – Always the women cleaning the toilet – women are supposed to be home keepers, patriarchal ideas

Vodacom advert • Set against the movie ‘Grease’ with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John (students) • The love between a taxi driver and a police woman. • Vodacom – fall in love this summer • The impossible can happen, Taxi man and a police woman? Assumption – the law and the law breaker • Class differences; gender (all female policewomen derailed and performing their airhead romantic functions). The man is ‘the’ man for having conquered the policewoman. Implied, not apparent, but they form part of the ideology • You as the viewer are being asked to participate in it by buying Vodacom and conquering the impossible

Hegemony • Problem with Althusser, looked at the masses as passive • Antonio Gramsci – still maintains that social relations are unequal but maintains that the dominant class rules by consent not coercion/force • The consent is negotiated • The ruling class packaged itself as a class most able to fulfill the interests of other classes

• The media – main sites of hegemonic struggle • Dominant ideas and values are presented in a form which allows them to seem as though they are working in the interests of those they help to subordinate.

Announcements (2009) • Research – make use of the libraries • Class schedules • Next quarter – will alternate class times. Will announce if I will be using the guest lectures on Tuesday for our main lectures, and the Thursdays for any guest or additional lectures • Your essay question – will discuss it on Tuesday during the guest lecture hour.