This Week... (Post 3)

While I like to think I'm a pretty keen observer of the media on my own, this class has given me a framework in which to discuss and critique the entertainment I consume on an everyday basis. When we first started the class, I struggled understanding the differences between icon, index, and symbol. In literary analysis classes, we always categorized anything that stood for something else as a "symbol". Having a more direct way of breaking down the different kinds of symbolic representation in the media has been interesting. This week, I finished off the first season of the fantastic television series Mr. Robot. This show is ripe for Marxist analysis, as it's all about the classic power struggle between the "haves" and the "have-nots". The show follows protagonist Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a compulsive hacker with a substance abuse problem, as he and his techie cohorts attempt to dismantle the power structures of society. In this near parallel to our 21st century society, the Western world is all but governed by a mega corporation, E Corp (or "Evil Corp" as Elliot refers to them). Throughout the course of the season, we start to discover just how deep E Corp's power runs and how easy it can be for people to get sucked into its sphere of influence. The show uses obvious references to today's headspace regarding the Internet (the hacks of Sony and Ashley Madison, Occupy Wall Street, notable whistleblowers) to make its symbolic points known. It often adopts the "we are the 99%" ideals of the Occupy movement, claiming the evils of unchecked capitalism as the root of all modern problems. The entire season plays out the tug of war between the diverse group of vigilante hackers representing average, disgruntled citizens and the homogenous corporate clones of the one percent variety.