Hegemony is how dominant ideology, the ideas or representations in a given social order, becomes naturalized. Ideologies usually have to compete with other ideologies in today's society. Not only is this competition between ideologies but with cultural controveries. Media comes into play as it provides a medium for which the ideologies and cultures maybe portreyed and shared. Media take the ideologies and cultures and put their own slant on the subject, sometimes blatantly and othertimes subliminally. Some examples of this is satire or news updates. When looking into the satire example, it is clear that the slant is blatantly expressed in favor of President Obama's health care reform featuring mildly well known actors and actresses. The other example is an article about an interview between Queen Noor of Jordan and an English Al Jazeera reporter. The media plays the role in the competition through making schedules, such as the newspaper is delivered on a schedule and television is put on a schedule(Gitlin's Prime Time Ideology: The Hegemonic Process In Television Entertainment), controlling in part our lives. Though this role has been removed for the most part as television is now recordable and minute-by-minute news is available on the internet.
The discussion on friday was interesting. The discussion on role models, especially when it came to athletes, was something I had not thought about. The idea that now little kids have fewer and fewer athletic heroes was something that hit me in that moment. The reason was that I remember when I was younger, I remember seeing the big athletes and thinking "how cool it would be to be like them?" Now with all that is happening in today's society, who do kids look to as heroes or persons to aspire to be? Is it the music artists, who portray themselves as thugs, promiscuous celebrities or corrupt politicians? Then there is this new generation that is growing up with the television as the way to be kept entertained, how will the children learn to imagine or dream to the extent that past generations have been able to? These questions are all connected to mass media in today's society and the discussion that occurred this past friday, and hopefully help to keep the conversation going.
The reading that has been done thus far for the class has been relatively interesting. Mass media has not been a subject of major thought prior to this blog, but the readings have changed that. One of my favorite quotes thus far is from Horkheimer and Adorno's The Culture Industry, "The reconciliation of general and particular, of rules and the specific demands of the subject, through which alone style takes on substance, is nullified by the absence of tension between the poles: 'the extremes which touch' have become murky identity in which the general can replace the particular and vice versa." Though I struggled to understand Kellner and Durham's "Adventures in Media and Cultural Studies" because I felt that I was unable to make the connections. Well till next time I am signing out.