Media Ideology Lecture

Ideology - System of ideas or beliefs
- Marxist Philosophy
- Media Subjects

- Ideas are presented in false, masked ways (false conscientiousness)
- Presented to give us masked view - Propaganda

Captalism - Bourgeoisie (wealthy, fat cats business owners)
- Proletariat (working class, produce commodities to be sold)

Marxism - Political manifesto - Communism - Everyone is equal - utopian values
- Society determined by human behavior

Base and Superstructure - Base - Workers, production line
- Superstructure - Social Institutions

Marxists concept of base and superstructure - Relations that govern relationships between worker and employer.
- Base determines superstructure
- Superstructure can strengthen the base

Capitalist system - Drive to constantly grow
- Superstructure - The state

Rulers - The government, politicians, kings - working on behalf of the rich.
Church - Mask over class divisions
Agents of the state - Army
The Bourgeoisie - Fat cats, business owners
The Proletariat - Workforce

Ideology - Berger - 'Ways of Seeing' (1972)
- The media is patriarchal - Men are thinkers, Women appear

Althusser - Economic Base
- Superstructure - Political
- Ideology - we buy into it. - it offers false solutions
- Interpellation - Sex divides
- 'Problematic' - more about what isn't printed (wonderbra ads) - reading behind ideology.

Ideological state apparatus - Keeps us in our place subconsciously
- Media creates false consciousness
- The constitution of the subject - Mind shaped through culture.

Newspapers - Coded forms of language - News discourse, Media Semiotics (J, Bignall)
- The sun joined labour campaign - Helping each other (Sun wrote articles favouring labour for handouts - relax monopoly laws.
- The Times - Born from a social area of privilege, Times font - symbolic of britishness.
- Star - Spoken language, less iconography, abbreviation, start to instruct, interpellate (load newspapers with sport and scantily clad women for men).
- Keeping/promoting social divides.

Decoding advertisements - We can link ourselves through commodity fetishism.
- Garbage of new york (buying into city culture and associations)

Frankfurt school - Critical theory
- Invented approach to society - critical theory.
- Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Lowenthal

Adorno/Horkheimer - Applying marxist ideology to 20th century.
- Culture industry - Identical to each other
- Business driven
- Examples - Xfactor/Big Brother (model to work to every year)

Authentic culture - Real
- European (America will never have authentic culture)
- Autonomous
- Example Dvorak - New world symphony (Authentic) - Once applied to advert, it loses its authenticity and becomes mass culture.

Adorno on Pop Music - Standardised
- Pre digest - Easy to consume
- Rhythmic + emotional adjustment (Pastiche)