Mary Jackson Pitts, Ph.D.

mpitts@astate.edu

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Ideological criticism and Analysis

Graduate presentation

James M. Mohr

What is ideological criticism?

l    Ideology is defined as the structure of beliefs, principles, practices that define, organize, and interpret reality.

l    Ideological criticism is concerned with the ways in which cultural practices and artifacts produce certain positions and knowledge for the users.

–    Ideology is meaning in the service of power

–    It investigates the ways in which meaning is mobilized by symbolic forms

–    Serves the vested interests of the prevalent power structure and its privileged members

Ideological theories

l    Stuart Hall (1993) – in an important sense one is never “outside” of ideology.

l    “When we contrast ideology to experience, or illusion to authentic truth, we are failing to recognize that there is no way of experiencing the real relations of a particular society outside of its cultural and ideological categories.”

l    Classical Marxist theory, Neo-Marxist, Althusser’s theory of Overdetermination, and Cultural theory.

Con-text & Cultural approaches

l   Meaning is understood as centered in empowered ideas

l   Or as sanctioned in social structures

Concepts of ideological criticism

l    Perspectives and information link the viewers and the economic and class interests of the media industry

l    That television programming is produced in specific historical and social context.

–    Produced by specific groups (bourgeoisie) for consumption by the masses (proletariat).

–    Aims to understand culture as a form of social expression

–    Aims to understand how a cultural text specifically enacts certain value and beliefs

Ideology concepts

l    Subjectivity refers to the understanding of individuals as a composite of forces and structures, including language, social class and family organization

l    Uneven-development involves the recognition that social change is a constant but inconsistent process, conflicting and contradictory forces effect all levels of society

l    Hegemony describes the general predominance of a certain class and ideological interest in a society

–    Social and cultural conflict are a fight for hegemony

Classical Marxism

l    That economic relationship of the base (society) shapes the superstructure (infrastructure of political, legal, religious institutions) of that society

l    Profit rules

l    That capitalism doesn’t reflect the full range of human values, but reduces them to profit, efficiency, and control.

l    That citizens develop a “false consciousness”

–    Commitment to profits rather than people

–    Acceptance of economic inequalities

Classical Marxism cont.

l    Hidden agenda

–    Favors employers over employees

–    Encourages people to accept a political and economics system that is not in their best interests

–    Perpetuate the status quo and continue the class system of oppression

l    Those interested in human freedom generate a new political agenda revealing capitalistic media reflections instead of average citizen

l    Or are duped by the dominant ideology    

Neo-Marxism or Critical theory

l   Frankfort school refugees from Nazi Germany created theory (Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Fromme, and Benjamin)

l   Noted the role of mass media, the “culture industry,” in manipulating the people

l   They noted Classical Marxism ignored race and gender domination, just economic class

Neo vs... classical Marxism

l   Four criticisms of classical Marxism

–   Reduces the superstructure to a reflection of the base

–   Abstracts from historical processes

–   Makes all human needs economic rather than social 

–   Isolates cultural factors related to economic structures

Marxism redefined

l   Power of ruling elite is maintained by ideology, not force

l   Establishing the ideas, values, and practices that serve the interest of ruling class as the natural and normal process

l   No longer “false consciousness” but the means of legitimate control of the base

Althusser’s theory of Overdetermination

l    Louis Althusser, French neo-Marxist who reformulated the superstructure to base relationship

l    He stated that although they were related, the superstructure was relatively autonomous from the economic base

–    ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses)

–    Ideological and institutional social practices that reproduce the dominant ideology through systems of representation

Viewer as Consumer & Commodity

l    American commercial TV is free

–    Commercial TV is first and foremost an advertising medium with viewers positioned as potential customers

–    Viewers are sold to advertisers and become commodities themselves in the act of watching TV

–    People don’t watch TV to look at products to buy, but that is the only reason the shows are there

–    “I’d flip through catalogues and wonder what kind of dining set defined me as a person.” Tyler Durden “Fight Club”

Hall & Fiske on the Cultural Approach

l    Both from Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Studies

l    Both argued that the media are main ideological institutions of capitalist societies

–    Althusser uses text as agent of domination

–    Hall, & later Fiske, both agree but add that texts are used for more than strategies of class domination

–    Both cultural and text-centered criticism use discourse analysis, but the emphasis is slightly different

Ideological analysis

l    Two approaches used by critics to analyze the ideological meanings and conflicts, discourse and metaphor analysis.

l    To examine the relationship between television text and the socio-cultural context is discourse analysis.

l    Fiske (1994) explains, “Critics do discourse analysis in order to make sense of the relationship between texts and the social world…to make sense of the world is to exert power over it.”

Discourse analysis

l   A system of representation that has developed socially in order to make and circulate a coherent set of meanings about an important topic

l   Discourse is politicized and powerful language the employed to attack or defend the dominant ideology

Discourse has 3 dimensions

l    A topic or area of social experience to which common sense argument is applied

l    A social position whose interests the argument promotes

l    A repertoire of words, images , and practices by which the meanings are circulated and power applied

l    Social discourse allows people to understand the texts, and in turn, texts reinforce the social discourse in a kind of mutual validation.

Metaphoric analysis

l   Metaphor is defined as the juxtaposition of two terms, usually regarded as very different

–   Examples-politics is war, or politics is a game

–   The types of linkage effect our perception of the meaning

–   Verbal and visual metaphors are used in television texts

Ideology in Narrative

l   I.A. draws on insights and methods of different approaches to textual analysis

–   Semiotics, genre, narrative, psychoanalysis, and others

–   I.A. assumes that television offers a social construction of reality different than universal truth