Wednesday, 4 March 2015

Monday 23rd & Tuesday 24th February Lesson Write Up

How is youth culture represented in the media?

the media promote a bad ideology of youth by exaggerating the truth and creating a moral panic, this was seen in the Brighton mods v rockers fight in the 1960's in which there was an outcry of people worrying about their safety. Stan Cohen theorised that the repetition of this sort of behaviour, caused by youths caused people to 'folk devil' and categorise youths as being 'yobs' and 'sawdust Ceasars'. However plan B's song 'Ill Manors' proposes that this image is untrue, it is predominantly the news and newspaper reports that are criticising youths and youth culture. 

Not just about fights, not as simple as 'it is negative'.

About; government, press, music videos expressing feelings towards this subject.

Predominantly a lower class opinion shown by the press which puts across a bad ideology of youth, people accept what is being said because they believe and trust the media and are brainwashed by it.

History repeats;
Back in 1972 Stan Cohen concluded that "the intellectual poverty and total lack of imagination in our society's response to its adolescent trouble makers during the past 20 years, is manifested in the way this response compulsively repeats itself and fails each time to come to terms with the 'problem' that confronts it"

Marxism
Marxists/Karl Marx are interested in;
- How dominant social groups are able to reproduce their social and economic power - Taylor & Willis 1999
- One of Marx's core ideas about society was that all societies have an economic base. This is seen to be the central core and focus of any society - what makes it function.
- In western cultures this economic base is essentially capitalist - in other words, the whole system is based on the pursuit of wealth.
- the problem is that this doesn't benefit all - the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in this type of system. It leads to social inequality.
- Marx sees a capitalist society as a split society. Those who have power are called the bourgeoisie. those who don't and who have to sell their labour for minimal pay and often no share of the profit are called the proletariat.
- Peoples ideologies construct society. Helps us understand collective identity.
Super Structure
- Marx saw that the economic base supported a super structure.
- The institutions that exist in a society such as those linked to the law, education, politics and the media. These are shaped by the economic base and exist to support, serve and legitimise the base to society - they partly exist to convince people that the way the country works is the right way.
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to make society believe the way in which society is run is the correct way and they feel safe in this society so don't want it to change.


How does Marxism apply to media texts?
- You can look at who owns a media production and who benefits the most financially.
- Texts can be examined to see if thy promote ideologies that support the ruling classes/the status quo - it is being used to control
- do texts promote inequality between groups based on power - are men privileged over women - white over other cultures - upper class over lower class

Althusser
- it is impossible to access the 'real conditions of existence' due to our reliance on language.
- Our language structures our experience of the world and our language is a consequence of the social world.
- We have no way of engaging with the world apart from language. Because of our being inside language we can't see external reality only the ideological interpretation of it - we can only see the representation of reality, not reality itself.
- adopting a set of beliefs or ideology from a system of beliefs we come to think that our beliefs are our own, that they originate from ourselves i.e. my beliefs emerge from my consciousness decisions, I have free will and can choose what I want to do.
- However what Althusser argues is that these beliefs are not really our own - they're social. we're taking part in shared societal ideas but they think they're our own private ideas. We internalise social beliefs and see them as our own.
- the beliefs/ideology can come to us through the ideological state apparatus, the devices by which ideology is transmitted.
- Our consciousness, what we are emerges from these. We exist from a system of beliefs and we internalise these beliefs and they became our own. We then in turn play a part in reproducing them. Therefore people are the producers and determine how society is ruled.

Gramsci - Hegemony
- Hegemony is the way in which those in power maintain their control. Dominant ideologies are considered hegemonic;power in society is maintained by constructing ideologies which are usually promoted by the mass media. We are shown representations of groups of people and consume them, we're made to believe how society is structured is correct.
- Hegemony tends to more often refer to the power of a single group in a society to essentially lead and dictate the other groups of the society. This may be done through communications, through influence of votes of government leaders.

In the media the institutions essentially make the audience view the world from their point of view making them have the same opinion as the producer giving them control over their identity.

Gramsci
- Because we're all connect with these beliefs and share them we actively contribute to their maintenance. Rather than a passive public we give consent to power systems.
- Hegemony is about getting us to actively agree to the system of oppression.

- Marx sees us as being ruled by the wealthy
- Althusser sees us as subjects
- Gramsci sees us as willing if not complicit participants in our own subjectification

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