Media and Ideology: Reflection

            Croteau’s “Media and Ideology” was such a fitting piece for me to read at this point in my life. The work that I do with PARC, as well as the topics that I enjoy reading about, tend to have a foundation in criticizing the ideology of the dominant society. Croteau notes that “when scholars examine media products to uncover their ‘ideology’, they are interested in the underlying images of society they provide. In this context, an ideology is basically a system of meaning that helps to define and explain the world and that makes value judgments about that world” (159). I personally believe that the ideology of the dominant society is one that is patriarchal, White supremacist, and anti-Black. This ideology is often conveyed in various forms of media, although somewhat subtle to the unquestioning eye. To have the media act as a medium for the dominant ideology, given the prominence of media in our everyday life, is an incredibly powerful way to indoctrinate people. More often than not the media that we consume isn't obviously misogynistic or racist, instead the things being presented often seem “natural” or “normal”. Croteau touches upon this wonderfully in his section ‘Ideology as Normalization’. He states:

Media texts can be seen as key sites where basic social norms are articulated. The media gives us pictures of social interaction and social institutions that, by their sheer repetition on a daily basis, can play important roles in shaping broad social definitions…the accumulation of media images suggests what is ‘normal’ (163).

When we are constantly being faced with certain behaviors we begin to see them as “natural”. When in reality what has happened is that those behaviors have become naturalized in our minds because of how regularly we see these behaviors. This can be particularly harmful when we do not have many interactions with the communities whom we are watching or reading about. This was the thinking behind much of the protest about the Oxygen reality show All My Babies Mama’s (read more about the controversy here). Black folk in television are often presented as pimps, hos, minstrels, thugs, unstable, and various incarnations of the aforementioned tropes as well as others. When not looking critically it’d be easy for people to not realize the proliferation of those tropes and to not realize the ways in which they have begun to see every-day Black folk in similar ways, even subconsciously. This is the reason why when a ‘well-spoken’ Black person speaks they often get showered with compliments of how “articulate” and “eloquent” they are. Those delivering the compliments do not realize exactly where their surprise is coming from and instead thinks they are being complimentary when in reality they are behaving in a manner that shows a subscription to the dominant view of Black folks being under-educated and inherently inarticulate. At this point I’ve only focused on the way this type of representation of Black folk affect those outside of the Black community. To try and touch upon the ways it affects Blacks, particularly Black youth, would double the length of this post. To put it simply, the ways in which Blacks are often represented in media lends a direct hand in the internalization of racist and anti-Black beliefs within the Black community itself. This, however, is not a call for all representations of the Black community in media to be "positive", but rather a call for balance. As Langston Hughes said in "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" we, as Black folk, "know we are beautiful, and ugly too". Instead of representing the reality of the multifarious nature of the Black community the media tends to simply represent the image of the Black community that falls in line with society's dominant ideology. 

Another way in which we can see how the dominant society’s ideology is being dispersed through media would be to look at the treatment of Django Unchained. The film is being heralded as a great film about slave resistance when in reality it is simply a revenge film that takes place during slave times. A truly great film about slave resistance would be Haile Gerima’s Sankofa (which can be found in its entirety, although not the best quality, on Youtube). Our society has a focus on the individual, which is why a film where an individual takes out entire plantations can be beloved by all even when it does not truly represent what most resistance mobilizations look like. Sankofa, on the other hand, truly shows the collective nature of resistance and revolution. However, that theme (as well as many others), goes against the dominant ideology and therefore that film gets far less attention than the inferior Django UnChained.

The viewpoints I have expressed in this post can be seen as controversial to some but that is because they directly counter many dominant themes of our society, particularly the false notion that we are passed conversations about race because we are ‘color-blind’ or have ‘evolved’. Because of this dominant theme those who do decide to have conversations that counter the dominant ideology are accused of being purposefully controversial or playing the ‘race-card’ (which is an offensive accusation that highlights the fact that we have not yet ‘evolved’). Similar sentiments are had when people try to expose the ‘subtle’ misogyny in pop culture. Let us not fall for “common sense” and rather continue to operate with a critical eye, for if we do not look at everything critically then we may easily succumb to an ideology that seeks to repress us. This is one of the points I hope we touch upon in class: the importance of analyzing and questioning everything (see Croteau page 166).

Works Cited
Croteau, David, and William Hoynes. "Media and Ideology." Media Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2003. 159-68. Print.

Hughes, Langston. ""The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926)." "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926). Web. 27 Jan. 2013.