Marxist and The Media 8/9/10

Today in lesson we discussed the Marxist theory, starting off with the ideas of whether the public are controlled not by fear or force but through ideas - the ideas that we came up were that we are not controlled in our society and that 'ideas' do control us which concluded that this quote may well be true. The 'ideas' can come from things such as religion or belief as examples.
But the main view through media is the stereotypes which society has, which highly manipulates resulting in fear and causing a moral panic.
We then looked at two other statements which referred to how certain aspects such as food we eat and what we look like etc are decided by people in society we found that there can be two meanings to this statement society in the sense of government and the public, in terms of the government the money income earned in certain families does determine what we buy such as products ( people usually resulting in buying the latest thing to look good an example being new trainers) and in terms of public a prime example being celebrities that are shown in the media and how they are portrayed, as magazines show this a lot which attracts peoples attention. A class example we came up with was religion being a main issue as some people are controlled in society by what they eat for example Muslims can not eat pork.
The other statement we looked at was about not having choice in society and everything has been decided for us but we have a minority view for the choice a key example was from cinemas- the idea that only selected films are chosen for viewing meaning we have limited choice and also the ideas of advertising being sold to us meaning that people are seen to want the latest thing as it portrays that everyone must have one.

We then talked about Karl Marx and his idea of the Marxist theory. The theories basic assumption is that the media is linked to the economic base of society known as capitalism. This is linked to media as people believe that major media companies use control over production to maintain their status quo (balance in society) (just as society is seen as ruling class exploiting the working class which keeps their status quo also). This also meaning that the media have more power over ideological messages as they are given more privileged positions than other viewpoints. (T.V shows with big viewing stats are more dominated)

The matrix being a good example –

There is a battle between the body and soul as Matrix puts it ‘‘the body being a prison for the mind or freeing the mind and allowing it to control the body’’ This links to Marxism in a way of saying that the body follows what society is told to do rather then the mind telling them how to react and be treated within society.-As the quote says.

When Morpheus asks Neo which pill he would choose this shows the choice being given to him meaning that if he chose the red pill you wake up to reality and embrace responsibilities that comes with it and if he chose the blue pill he would go back to sleep. Each and everyone of us have a choice of freedom, so do we chose to embrace ourselves by taking the red pill or choosing the blue pill and go back to sleep as an example. This links to choice within society and whether people allow themselves to follow what society is being presented as or to take responsibility of what is actually happening in society (ruling class taking over).


Another view that we learnt today is by Gramsci and the idea of Hegemony (1991 - 1937) this idea is linked to the ruling class as seen to having more economic power meaning they were the most dominant ideology in society making it become a naturalised aspect of how society should be organised and seen. This meaning that hegemonic control was seen as ideological control and that the public accept ideas through socialisation.
In other words it is seen as the concept of the Ruling Classes (the Bourgeoisie) values being imposed upon the population is known as hegemony. This set of values,according to Marxist theory, is actually forced upon people and what they believe they are agreeing to as a result of their own beliefs is in reality in the interest of the ruling class. As a class we analysed this theory was the same as the quote suggesting meaning that we do not have freedom to act and that we are controlled by certain things in life.

Reality Television and Marxism

The installation of video cameras capturing every moment of life in the Big Brother house has obvious parallels with the spread of CCTV through the public spaces of the contemporary world.36 Another major issue of concern for academic analysis is the political implications of the fact that Big Brother commands a large, enthusiastic and largely young audience who pay to vote in considerable numbers. There are serious analyses claiming that shows like this can provide a model for the regeneration of bourgeois politics.37

From a Marxist perspective these issues, while interesting, miss the point about what kind of social relations are embodied in the show and what that helps us understand about the nature of contemporary capitalism. Producers and broadcasters are engaged in producing a marketable commodity, but to get the attention of the audience (and so sell it to the advertisers) they have to produce something that resonates with their intended audience and they have to recruit suitable participants.