1.2: Power and Ideology - Classroom Activity

Reading Culture | Classroom Activity | 'How'd You Get That Idea'

How To Use This Material [Instructor Note]

• This is a two-parter—a guided lecture and an interactive ‘theory in action’ class activity/discussion—intended to introduce the concepts of power and ideology, and is designed for students of all experience levels. A link to a prepared Google Slides presentation can be found here (with a preview offered below).
  • Slides 3-8 offer first a brief over-arching sketch of the two concepts, and slides 9-13 a more detailed discussion of some of major theoretical ‘players in the game’
  • Slides 14-30 offer various ways for students to see the concepts in action, and begin to develop a critical ideological eye when engaging with media artifacts
• This class activity is meant to follow J. F. Lindsay’s multimedia essay, and as such will make reference to a few of the materials contained within his piece
• You are welcome to make a copy of this material and edit it as you wish; please be sure to follow the CC license mandates when doing so

Lecture

• Power, within the social sciences, isn’t what you might typically think of: it isn’t ‘power’ as in brute force, it isn’t ‘the power’—the capacity—to do something, it’s power as in: the structures and systems that instill and maintain particular relations between individuals, institutions, nations. For media studies, of particular interest is how mediated tools work to instill, reproduce, challenge, and disrupt power relations between different stakeholders
  • We have, then, a public execution and a time-table. They do not punish the same crimes or the same kind of delinquent. But they each define a certain penal style. Less than a century separates them” (Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish)
  • “It all… is about power in the end” (Roger Silverstone, Media and Morality)
  • “Power is the central thing that social scientists study… at the core of who and what we are” (Jonathan Hearn, Theorizing Power)
  • “...one of the most distinctive features of media power [is] the ability to influence the basic reference points of social life” (Nick Couldry, “Power” - Keywords for Media Studies)
• “How to Understand Power” | Eric Liu
  • “Everyday of your life you move through systems of power that other people made”
  • “Power is the ability to make other do what you would have them do"
    • “It determines who gets to determine the rules of the game”
  • “Power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics. It just is”
  • Six main sources of power: 1. Physical force | 2. Wealth | 3. State action | 4. Social norms | 5. Ideas | 6. Numbers
  • Three laws worth examining: 1. Power is never static (hegemonic negotiation) | 2. Power is like water; it flows like a current though everyday life | 3. Power compounds, power begets more power (same goes for powerlessness)
    • Instructor Notes: I usually talk through each of the sources of power Liu identifies, having the class generate responses for each category. I skip over social norms, returning to it last as the bridge to introduce ideology. Some examples:
      • Physical force - policing, imprisonment, institutionalization
      • Wealth - lobbying, literally buying other kinds power (i.e., celebrities/security details, Jeff Bezos owning The Washington Post)
      • State action - passing laws, geopolitics
      • Ideas - MLK ‘I Had A Dream,’ #metoo, #BlackLivesMatter
      • Numbers - Palestinian solidarity encampment protests, George Floyd protests, Women’s March on Washington
      • I typically talk students through the laws, too:
      • Power is never static: women’s rights, for instance, are in a much different place today than they were in the 1920s—but that doesn’t mean we’re not still living under systems of patriarchy
      • Power is like water: sometimes, the waters can be choppy (social injustice, for instance), but other in other cases, it can be tranquil (being able to leave one’s apartment with a good chance of not getting punched in the face, for instance)—power is not good or bad, it just is
• “Concepts of Ideology” | Harry Benshoff
  • Ideology “refers to the basic ideas and assumptions that help shape a given culture, the preconceived notions and beliefs that structure a given society (as well as individual members)” (19)
    • Ideology is all around us. It’s the logics of our world, the ways of thinking/seeing/being that hold us together, the unwritten, unspoken doctrines that dictate right from wrong, acceptable from unacceptable, agreeable to disagreeable; it is the “invisible glue that binds… [our] various objects and behaviors into a coherent and meaningful system of shared relatable experiences” (19)
  • “...we can [never] ‘step outside’ ideology. We can become aware of the ideological messages that surround us… but doing so does not exactly make us free from them. Ideologies are pre-existing social and political structures that surround us from the moment we are born to the moment we die. They shape our lives and how we think about the world whether we are aware of them or not” (24)
  • Ideology isn’t always a unified, calculated logic; “any given society is awash in multiple ideologies… texts and people… and the ideologies they contain constantly ebb and flow, interacting and interweaving with one another” (20)
    • That said, “in different cultures and in different historical eras, some ideologies are invariably more prominent or prevalent than others”—these are the “dominant ideologies: the set of ideas and assumptions that are most prevalent within any given culture at any point in time” (20)
    • In other words, when certain ideologies—when certain ideas, ways of being/thinking/understanding the world—become unquestioned, become naturalized, become unquestioned truth
  • Ideology is never fixed, never stable; the ideological doctrine of the moment is always “on the table,” influenced and altered by the cultural productions and attitudes of the time
    • Hegemonic negotiation—“...any given society is made up of a huge diversity of ideological positions—in people, in texts, in governing bodies—that necessarily interact with one another in multiple ways… this interaction can and does lead to social change” (20)
• A more detailed version of this lecture, which includes talking through some of the major players/theories in the game (from Marx to present day), can be found here.

Interactive Discussion

Now that we’ve got all that important history, development, and definition out of the way, let’s start to actually use this stuff, to make these concepts a bit more real by witnessing them with our very own eyes…

Dominant Ideology Spotlight: Patriarchy

• Take a look at this this brief clip from Pixar’s Inside Out, featuring a look inside the heads of main character Riley’s parents
• What differences did you spot between the two depictions? Similarities? Why do you think the filmmaking team made these decisions when illustrating the parents’ perspectives?
• Taking it a step further: how might these depictions influence our own understandings of the similarities and differences between genders? How might these depictions reinforce particular conceptualizations of gender roles?

Dominant Ideology Spotlight: Patriarchy

• As feminist work makes clear, patriarchy is a system that hurts all of us—even those it would seemingly most support
• Think about what kinds of understandings of masculinity, for instance, are promoted by this famous Old Spice ad
• How might these messages influence how one enacts, performs, and make sense of their own gender identity?

Dominant Ideology Spotlight: Nationalism

• This Budweiser ad is about the ‘typical American,’ suggesting something about a national character we should ascribe to
• What, according to this ad, are the qualities of a typical American?
• How might these messages influence our overall understanding of the moral character—and potentially, even the superiority—of America?

Dominant Ideology Spotlight: Race & Stereotype

• This clip from Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing sees the filmmaker playing with cinema’s power to both reinforce and deconstruct racial stereotypes
• What racial understandings does Lee promote within the scene? What understandings does he complicate, and offer a more nuanced depiction of?
• What do you think the result of these decisions might be on the viewer?

Dominant Ideology Spotlight: What’s in a Living Room?

• Ideological influence is not always as direct and explicit, as evidenced by these images below showcasing a broad array of TV living rooms
• What kinds of lifestyles, perspectives, and worldviews are promoted by these depictions?
• Think, too, of elements beyond the living room: cultural markers, class markers, gender markers, etc. Likewise, think about the results of these depictions; how might they influence us and the lifestyles, perspectives, and worldviews we come to value?

Dominant Ideology Spotlight: Capitalism/Consumerism

• The following images feature the homepages of a variety of different popular shopping websites
• What kinds of approaches to wealth, accumulation, and purchasing are promoted?
• Think, too, of the ways in which the sites introduce ‘problems’ that need to be solved (often by purchasing something); what other ideologies might be reinforced through these websites’ designs?
• Likewise, as per usual: think about the results of these depictions, how might they influence us and the lifestyles, perspectives we come to value, and the purchases we choose to make

Works Cited

Budweiser. Typical American. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, DAVID, Jan. 2020.

Benshoff, Harry M. Film and Television Analysis: An Introduction to Methods, Theories, and Approaches. Routledge, 2016.

Do the Right Thing. Directed by Spike Lee, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, 1989.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995.

Inside Out. Directed by Docter & Del Carmen, Pixar Animation Studios, 2015.

Liu, Eric & TED-Ed. “How to understand power.” YouTube, 4 Nov. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Eutci7ack

Old Spice. The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. Directed by Tom Kuntz, performance by Isaiah Mustafa, Wieden+Kennedy, 2010.

Couldry, Nick. “Power.” Keywords for Media Studies, edited by Laurie Ouellette and Jonathan Gray, New York University Press, 2017, p. 146.

© J. F. Lindsay, CC BY-NC-SA