Starter task

• How is youth/youth culture represented in the media? use a variety of media forms and theory to back up your answer.

News papers, films, TV, music/music videos, news reports.

History repeats

Back in 1972, Stanley Cohen concluded: • "The intellectual poverty and total lack of imagination

in our society's response to its adolescent trouble-makers during the past 20 years, is manifest in the way this response compulsively repeats itself and fails each

time to come to terms with the 'problem' that confronts it."

• Quadrophenia is a striking and evocative reminder of a bygone age when Britain was … well, basically exactly the same as it is now.

• To what extent do you agree with this? A good statement to use in your exam as part of your argument.

Media Theory

• We will now explore some more media theory and theorists.

• You will use these theories and theorists to back up your point/argument in your exam.

• Please take notes• We will look in to Marxism, Althusser and

Gramsci

Marxism

• Marxists/ Karl Marx are interested in

• “How dominant social groups are able to reproduce their social and economic power” Taylor and Willis (1999)

Marxism

• 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 does not benefit all – the rich get richer and the poor poorer in this type of system. It leads to social inequality.

Marxism

• Marx sees a capitalist society as a split society. Those who control or have power are called the bourgeoisie.

• Those who do not and who have to sell their labor for minimal pay and often no share of the profit are called the proletariat.

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.

• To make society believe in which society is run is the correct way and they feel safe in this society so do not want it to change.

Marxism

• 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 they promote ideologies

that support the ruling classes/ the status quo – is it being used to control – ask what ideologies are being pushed? Who do they benefit?

• Do texts promote inequality between groups based on power – are men privileged over women? White groups over other cultures? Upper class youths over lower class youths?

Althusser

• Althusser says we are subjects of what we are made to believe.

• Ideology has been created for us and we can only consume what we are made to believe, by doing so we are ultimately subjects of ideology that has already been created for us.

• We accept ideology and how its created as we build our ideas on previous assumptions created on what we have made ourselves to believe.

Ideology and Althusser

• Ideology is not “false consciousness.” Rather ideology structures what we do and makes our reality.

• Althusser is a structuralist we cannot exist outside of culture or ideology. It provides meaning to our lives, the systems that we live through.

• In short, we have no reality beyond our ideology we ‘adopt’ an identity from a shared set within society.

Starter task

• Write down the following deadline in capital letters in your book.

• ANCILLARY TEXTS ARE DUE ON FRIDAY 13TH MARCH 4PM SUBMITTED ON TO BLOGS. YOUR LAST TWO POSTS ON YOUR BLOG BY THIS DATE NEED TO BE TITLED AND POSTED.

Althusser• For 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 –

(semiotics) 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.

• However, through a vigorous study of economics, history and sociology, we can come close to perceiving ideological systems and how we are placed in specific sets of relations by those systems.

Althusser

• 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 conscious 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 are social. We are taking part in shared societal ideas but think they are our own private ideas. We internalise social beliefs and see them as our own.

Althusser

• The beliefs/ideology come to us through the Ideological State Apparatus, the devices by which ideology is transmitted. Family, Education, Media, Religion, Culture, Arts.

• Our consciousness, what we are emerges from these. We exist from a system of beliefs and we internalise these beliefs and they become 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 are 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 voters or 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 identity and the public consumer.

Gramsci Hegemony

• Gramsci uses the idea of hegemony By this he meant the spreading throughout society of a system of values, attitudes, beliefs and morality that has the effect of supporting the status quo in power relations.

• Dominant relations of power become seen as common sense so that the philosophy, culture and morality of the ruling elite comes to appear as the natural order of things.

• The values that maintain the power relations infiltrate all levels and aspects of culture.

• A hegemonic belief is something we all concur with, its normal and is spread throughout society. Its something that we have accepted as part of life.

Gramsci

• Because we all concur with these beliefs and share them we actively contribute to their maintenance.

• Rather than a passive public we give consent to power systems. EG - The ruling groups present themselves as the group best able to provide us with the means to pursue our needs and to maintain power the dominant groups constantly realign themselves and adopt different critical concerns.

Gramsci

• Hegemony is about getting us to actively agree to the system of oppression(authority/power). Ideology is not imposed but a system of choices and ideas. These are grouped together into set which we choose to adhere

Marxism/Althusser/Gramsci

• 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.

Task 1

Your opinion on how youth is represented in the media

Societies opinion on how youth is represented in the media

The press’s opinion and representation on youth

Why/how these opinions/ideologies have formed

Give at least 5 points in each area and back up your points with texts we have studied in lesson or any other media examples you have noticed while studying collective identity and deem to be relevant.

Task 2 summary

• To what extent does Karl Marx theory impact on how society understand youth and the representation of youth culture?

• How does Althusser’s theory and concept of ideology have an impact on the future representations of youth and youth culture?

• How does Gramscis theory of hegemony apply to the media texts that we have explored in lesson?

Task 3

• Timed response:

Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group of people that you have studied.

Or‘The media do not construct collective identity, they merely reflect it.’ discuss