Ideologies of various various Media Forms

By: Faraz Malik

Defnation of Ideology

• Ideologies are the ideas and beliefs that are socially constructed in a society. It is how society makes sense of things areound them.
• These are the messages that media producers convey to the audience, who then may interpret these messages in a way that can be understood by themselves but the intended messageremains the same.
• Ideologies are the ideas that are normal for our society, although these ideas develop over time.

For Example: Ideologies for men have changed that men do ot involve themselves in housework, where as now men do thecooking and take care of the children as well.

Example #1: Cartoons

In the modern societies, an ideology has come about that the ruling class (the burgeoise) rules over the working class (the proletariat). Same ideology is being portrayed inthis picture. This has become a major problem in our society, which this picture clearly highlights. We can see that the 'corporate executive' in this picture, which is representing the working class. The idea behind these cartoons is that the ruling class owns the means of productons, they then exploit the proletariat by giving them less wage than their labour,this was to ensure profit for them (surplus value). We understand fom this that while the ruling class gains profit by giving less wage to the working class than their labour, the working class do not have enough money to afford anything for themselves.The  bourgeoise completely depend upon the working class which is why they do not letthe working class gain conciousness of their status in society otherwise it would result in conflict and then communism will come about.

Nowadays we live in a world where believing in something that does not exist often becomes our escape from our everyday lives. The movie 'Hobbit' provides us with the ideology that not everything is as clear as white and black. The theme of a constant fight between good versus evil is tied to this film. The battle between elves, dwarves and men directly connotes the modern society where there are divisions according to religion, caste and race.

We understand from this film that even though ther are endless divisions  in our society, we have to work together as to maintain social order, which can be seen when the fellowship of the ring has been decided and all men, hobbits, dwarves and elves work together so that Froddo baggins, the protagonist, is able to destroy the ring and end the reign of the evil dark lord, Sauron.

We see in this film that the only way to resolve the fight through conflict which these charecters have done, through war, with Orcs on one side and Men, Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits on the other side.

Example #2: Film

This magazine cover represents a very dominant ideology on the importance of physical appearance by using Zac Efron. Te magazine influences men to focus more on their physical appearances.

The immediate colour theme that we see is blue and dark blue which set the ideology of this magazine being a men's magazine since the colour blue stereotypically identifies the masculinity of men. The very first caption targets the audience mostly from teenage boys to men in their early 30's. The ideology that this magazine sets is that mostly men inbetween these ages are obsessing over their bodies (which is proven by the very first caption)

Example #3: Magazine

• Since men are more into sports that is the reasonwhy we see that there is a football in Zac Efron's hands whic makes this magazine more appealing for men

• These captions show how much men are concerned about their figures, but at the same time their intake of food is much more than women usually require. Since it is a stereotype that men eat a lot more, is the reason which makes this magazine more interesting for men.