Codes, Ideology, and "Realities" in Culture and

Media

The problem of “reality” in media

• Problems we create for ourselves with the notion of “realistic,” e.g., “I like that TV show because it’s so realistic.”

• All fictional stories, whether novels, films, TV shows, are at base lies, stories presented as if they were real when they are not.

• The relation of texts to reality, therefore, is necessarily more complicated that we typically imagine.

The willing suspension of disbelief in fiction

• Definition: a tacit “agreement” between reader/audience and writer to interpret a fictional text as if it were real so that the reader/audience experiences a “realistic effect.”

• Requires narrative techniques, e.g., “realist detail,” film special effects, filmed continuity, etc.

• This is why creators of fictional texts “lie, cheat, and steal with time and space.”

Identities, Subjectivities, Selves

Code Conflicts and Magic Resolutions

• Advertisements often suggest a product can magically reconcile conflicting codes, e.g.:

• Women: 1) be beautiful, frail, dependent; 2) be independent, strong, successful

• Men: 1) be macho, strong, independent; 2) be sensitive, literate, supportive

• Politics: 1) we're all equal, we're all in it together; 2) the goal is to win, especially economically, i.e., to be UNequal

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Concepts for Ideological Analysis

• Polysemy

• Deconstruction: look for gaps or contradictions in meaning

• Look for identities (or subject-positions) that are presupposed ("sutured") into the text -- i.e., “interpellation”

Meanings: Agency and Structure

● Human agency • Human agency makes sense of the meanings from media

texts

● “Polysemy” • Media texts have multiple meanings

• Media texts contain an “excess” of meanings within them (Fiske, 1986)

• Openness of interpretation is a highly desirable feature for mass-market media

• Example: Antiwar films • Example: The case of The Cosby Show • Example: Chappelle’s Show

Croteau and Hoynes: Media/Society, 5th Edition © 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.

Decoding Media and Social Positions

● Encoding-decoding theory ● Audience’s decoding models

• Dominant reading • Oppositional reading • Negotiated reading

Croteau and Hoynes: Media/Society, 5th Edition © 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.

Active Audience and Interpretive Resistance

● Oppositional readings of popular media texts ● “Semiological guerillas” • Culture jamming

• Parody or criticism of mainstream culture • Pranking

• The case of “No Comment” • Feminists’ oppositional readings of mainstream culture • Helped create a feminist identity

• Teenage girls’ reading of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper • Different reading from the mainstream interpretation

Croteau and Hoynes: Media/Society, 5th Edition © 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.

Ideological Analysis in Media

● Ideology • “A system of meaning that helps define and explain

the world and that makes value judgments about that world”

● Ideological analysis • Study of media images sent about the nature of the

world, how it operates, and how it should be • Media images do not simply reflect the world

• They “re-present” (construct) the world • They are ideological

Theoretical Roots of Ideological Analysis

● Marxist origins • Ideology as a powerful mechanism of social control

whereby members of the ruling class imposed their worldview

• “False consciousness”

● Gramsci’s view of ideology • Power can be wielded at the level of culture or ideology • Hegemony: control of consensus; promotion of

dominant, taken-for-granted ideologies • Mass media are one of the principal sites where the

cultural leadership, the work of hegemony, is exercised

Problems in understanding ideology

• The problems with the notion of ideology as false consciousness

• epistemological problem: assumes a singular truth, that you understand but most people do not

• political problem: do you really want to say that everyone who disagrees with you is stupid?

Ideology as “common sense”

• Instead: Ideology as a culture's common sense

• Ideology as maps of meaning that order everyday experience, that create the “things everyone knows,” the "taken-for-granted"

• Neither true nor false, but connected to social relations and power

Implications• There are no non-ideological understandings,

only better or worse ideologies

• Ideological analysis needs to be directed at oneself as well as others

• The analysis of ideology is a continuous process of asking questions about the common sense assumptions, of both others and our own everyday thought.

News Media and the Limit of Debate

●News media can be ideological • “The news supports the social order of public,

business, and professional, upper-middle-class, middle-aged, and white male sectors of society. . . . In short, when all other things are equal, the news pays most attention to and upholds the actions of elite individuals and elite institutions” (Gans, 2004)

Croteau and Hoynes: Media/Society, 5th Edition © 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.

Ideology and Popular TV● Images of family • Dominantly white, upper-middle-class, happy, secure • Changed toward family conflict and struggle in the

1970s • Work family programs

● The new momism • The old, “perfect mother” image resurrected • Celebrity motherhood

• “Set of ideas, norms, and practices, most frequently and powerfully represented in the media, that seem on the surface to celebrate motherhood, but which in reality promulgate standards of perfection that are beyond our reach.”

Croteau and Hoynes: Media/Society, 5th Edition © 2015 SAGE Publications, Inc.