Blog Post #4 Marxist Analysis and You

        The Marxist lens of analysis is used to understand the dynamics of power in a media artifact. It uses the same techniques of semiotic analysis only focusing them on the group structures and how rigid or fluid they are as well as the how the dominant group exerts control over or  alienate those who do not share the same Ideologies.  Rather than placing character into Propp's dramatis personae we instead figure out how their lifestyles and group boundaries are dived and the difficulty of crossing from one group to another using what is called Group-Grid Theory. Those who go against the dominant group face the most resistance, those who adhere to it maintain the status quo and some become distraught and alienate themselves entirely.  The dynamics of power groups can examined in all the ways that there is a dependency in power be it, sexual, economic, social or physical all of these conflicts can be examined through a Marxist thus create an understanding of how these groups interact with each other deepening the understanding of them. 

Blog Post 4

Marxism can best be described as the power structures and conditions in a society and how the upper or higher people have control and influence. Marxism involves 3 main points, ideology, hegemony, and false consciousness. Ideology can be summarized as a concept that refers to shared ideas and beliefs in a society. "The concept of ideology forces readers to perceive that all cultural texts have the distinct biases, interests, and embedded values, reproducing the point of view of their producers and often the values of the dominant social groups (Durham and Kellner)." Religion is an example of ideology. Hegemony transcends and includes the concepts of culture and ideology. Hegemony is a dominant ideology of one over another. Religion being forced upon a country as the rule of law is an example of this. False Consciousness is the spread of propagated information by the elite over mass media and popular culture. Through the use of false consciousness the masses are manipulated and exploited by the ruling class. An example of false consciousness today would be news outlets. They are owned and supported by large corporations which decide what will be told to the masses.  

The way to critique media through a Marxist lens is to identify the positions of the subjects involved. The characters can sometimes be identified with and are models to us, while one who we do not identify with are anti-models. Once the subjects and their positions are identified the media's class and power structures can be analyzed.

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Marxism in the media is a little different than the Marxism we know from history. The Marxist perspective is the idea that money and material conditions are what shape our dominant ideology about who’s empowered and who’s not. It’s the idea that the people with money will always hold more power than those without money. In pop culture, the goal of Marxism is to expose how these same ideas and concepts are woven into our media. It reveals how the media is reinforcing these power structures as conventional and common sense. If you were to critique a piece of media through a Marxist lens, it’s important to look at concepts such as ideology and hegemony. Ideology is a notion that “refers to the collective beliefs, attitudes, and values of a given group of people” (J. Johnson, lecture, October 1, 2015). Hegemony is the dominant ideology over another group’s ideology. Some examples of hegemonic ideologies include: the wealthy delegate the poor, men are more powerful than women, or white people make better employees than people of color. Once you’ve analyzed the power structures that have been established, it is also important to analyze the messages within the text that are challenging the status quo. For example, in High School Musical Troy Bolton, the all-star athlete, decides to audition for the school musical. This creates a problem within the power structure of high school; jocks are meant to play sports and musicals are meant for drama students. So in this example, Troy is challenging the status quo and to further prove it, there’s a whole musical number dedicated to it in the movie. These are just a couple of the steps you could take towards analyzing a piece of media through a Marxist lens.