Marxism

The Marxist lens of analysis is used to understand the dynamics of power in a media artifact. Marxism is a very interesting topic, it makes you question your reality and the society that you live in but in a good way. Marxism has three main concepts that make up the whole theory: ideology, hegemony and false consciousness. An ideology is simply the shared ideas and beliefs of a society. Hegemony is part ideology and also part culture, each culture has a different ideologies which lead to hegemony. The final concept, false consciousness is an idea that the higher elite brainwash the masses into believing whatever they want and convince them to be complacent of what they are given.  Just knowing about Marxism can help you analyze your society and find hidden meanings in media. Much like an episode of a TV show most people think has no intellectual value. From a Marxist point of view however, just one episode can teach you a lot about class conflict, and the downsides to working too much and how it can lead to things like alienation. An easy way to analyze a show is to start with finding the different hierarchical levels of each character. If you look at a show like how to get away with murder we can see s classic hierarchical structure with all the main characters. There is the elitist, professor Keating, who is in the highest standing amongst the main characters. From there, we have Bonnie and Frank, who work for Annalise, and have power over the students who work below them. Finally there are the students Wes, Michaela, Asher and Laurel who are at the lowest level and have to work the hardest to make the elite look good. As Marxism explains, the lowest class always works hard to make the higher up look good.