Analyzing Commercials - Interpellation

I thought this last year commercial would be ripe for an analysis.

Ideology and Hegemony

Ideology

Definition One

Althusser explains that ideology is a “closed system,” a world constructed by the historical, political, religious, and economic institutions that determine the boundaries in which people can exist. Alhusser defines this existence as a practice, which “shapes an individual’s lived relations to the social formation” (Storey, p. 71). The system is closed because it allots the available options for an individual to work, study, and live. To me, it is similar to The Truman Show where Truman is given his existence in a simulated realm of reality, “offering false, but seemingly true, resolutions to real problems.” This idea of ideology “is profoundly unconscious in its mode of operation” (71). Truman’s interactions with his world and the relationship with his wife were both real and imaginary, real because they were the actual conditions that he interacted with, imaginary because of the representations of reality offered to him (e.g. the idea that everything had already been explored, the notion that he could not travel to Fiji).

The “problematic” emerges from this closed system in providing meaning to words and objects that come to life only within this world they live in. Perhaps ideas like war or famine had not been introduced to Truman’s world, and therefore would have no meaning in that system. Words take on meaning as they interact within the system that allows for them. Therefore, there are only a limited number of outcomes, solutions, or possibilities in the expression and interpretation of a text (as Scarlet Johansson’s character in The Island asked after breaking out of her false world, “What’s love?”). To recognize the problematic is to recognize unanswered “questions which threaten to take [ideology] beyond these boundaries” of a mythic reality (p. 72). Recognizing the problematic for Truman was when he smashed into the wall which presented itself as an eternal sky. He then saw the limitations of his world and the imaginary interactions in which he unconsciously engaged. Not only did he recognize the imaginary, but he questioned the reality of the closed system itself by asking, “Was nothing real?” Leaving the dome he lived in, he was then able to see a host of new possibilities, conditions, and systems of existence beyond what had been previously appointed and presented to him.

This closed system is similar to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which a certain reality is presented to men chained in a cave, an initial manifestation of what the world looks like and offers. The chained men only see the shadows cast on the walls which constrains their understanding of reality in terms of silhouettes. They are unaware of the world outside of the cave. It is important to understand Pierre Macherey’s ideas concerning symptomatic reading, not only because it provides valuable insight into the notion of Althusserian thought, but because it allows new ways for students to approach text and media. “For [Macherey] the text is not a puzzle that conceals a meaning; it is a construction with a multiplicity of meanings” (p. 74). This provides a practical approach to critically analyzing artifacts like film narratives, sermons, and political rhetoric in new ways.

Similar to the Truman Show, George Orwell’s 1984 presents a dystopia where an environment is controlled, regulating the interaction individuals have within their world and their perception of reality. A Macintosh commercial plays on 1984’s notion of “bad faith,” causing an “innovative revolution”—a computer that overthrows the “limited” awareness of what a computer is and what technology “Big-Brother”-corporations provide/allow.

Definition Two

The second definition of ideology focuses on the institutions themselves that produce beliefs and ideas. Althusser calls these institutions Ideological State Apparatuses or ISAs. The act of taking tests in university, praying in church, going on family vacations, and voting are actions called interpellation. Individuals who are interpellated allow themselves to be shaped by the ISAs, producing for the individual a confined outcome of beliefs, values, and behaviors. Althusser’s example of interpellation is helpful. He explains that a police officer hails an individual—“Hey, you there!” “When the individual hailed turns in response, he or she has been interpellated, has become a subject of the police officer’s discourse” (p. 78). Responding to the institutions that “hail” us or present material practices, rituals, and customs that we engage in subjects us to their particular value system.

Just as Pierre Macherey utilized Althusser’s ideology in critical approaches to literature, Judith Williamson looked at advertising using the second definition of ideology. She moved her focus from what commodities are produced to what commodities we consume. An advertisement can “call” or interpellate us by drawing upon how we identify ourselves. As it identifies us, it simultaneously adds to the construction of our identity, thus we see ourselves in the product. An individual may think that he or she is the only audience of the product because of the unique identity the individual assumes, seeing the product as “special-made” for him or her. I’ve observed that competition ensues as people claim the product is most unique to them. Have you have heard someone claim, “I was listening to this band long before they were on the radio.

Following interpellation, why do some styles of clothes ever see the light of day?

Does every product we buy interpellate us?

Why did I use to look so much like Minkus from "Boy Meets World"?

Giving presents is an interesting custom in regards to product interpellation. In searching for Christmas gifts, for example, I believe I am buying something in which I can see the identity of the receiver of the gift. I look for things that has the other person’s name “written all over it.” Not only do I strive to select a gift “tailor-made” for the receiver, but oftentimes I am pulled to items that I can also identify myself partly in the gift as well. Much of the gifts I end up buying for others is usually stuff I like. Perhaps it’s the unique relationship between me and the receiver that is bound within the identity of the gift. Also, some gifts I receive from others I don’t appreciate as much like gift certificates because they aren’t as personal to me. I don’t see myself in a plate of sea food, for example.

I wonder about this second definition of ideology because of the certain practices, ideas, and values that I have not absorbed from constant interpellation. Perhaps part of that is because interpellation demonstrates that it is the act of the person responding to the “hail” of the product or ISA that the person then becomes interpellated. Throughout my life, people have done everything they could to get me to like country music—radio, dances, restaurants. But I continue to loathe it. Is this an exception to the rule of ideology, or has interpellation actually taken place?

Hegemony

The word that perhaps best defines Gramsci’s hegemony is “consensus.” Basically, hegemony refers to a social group that is willing to be led by particular interests, regardless of oppression or injustices. It is “a society in which subordinate groups and classes appear to actively support and subscribe to values, ideals, objectives, cultural and political meanings, which bind them to, and ‘incorporate’ them into, the prevailing structures of power” (Storey, p. 80). My understanding of hegemony is that it’s similar to ideology in that it demonstrates a limited palette of options for individual freedom on a society, and it influences a society because of ruling institutions or the bourgeoisie. The difference is that ideology is an unconscious submission to societal oppression, hegemony is consciously participating in these cultural influences and oppressive “norms.”

In my example of ideology, once Truman recognized the problematic, he left the closed system and ventured to other possibilities. As one discovers other possible meanings of a text after the surface-level meaning emerges, one rejects the idea that the surface-level meaning is the true nature of that text. However, in hegemony, one could recognize further meanings or realities but continue in the closed system or initial interpretation of the text. Had Truman stayed in the dome after Cristof invited him, he would partake in a hegemonic society, consciously subjected to the control of that realm by Cristof who manipulated the conditions of that society.

Storey discusses capitalism’s hegemony, a system acquired over many years as the result of social, cultural, and economic influences. Regardless of the injustices this system maintains, the U.S. and other capitalist nations continue in the system. However, a non-capitalist nation like North Korea is also a clear example of hegemony. In a documentary by National Geographic, North Koreans are conscious (although perhaps not in full) to poor conditions and injustices rampant in the country. Yet they worship their leader, Kim Jong Il who recently died. On a global level, North Korea wants to be as independent as possible from the rest of the world and has rejected the “hegemonic” society of the global community. This detachment (although extreme) is understandable given powerful nations like the U.S. and England with their hegemonic cultures and efforts to take advantage of globalization. Some nations in the past have resisted interaction from the United States (like Brazil and Argentina) but have more recently become “allies” to them.

Discussion Questions

1. How do you recognize a “closed system” in your day-to-day life?

2. How do you reinforce the idea of hegemony by acting as an interpellator, not as one being “hailed” by the officer but one who “hails”?

3. Give an example of identifying the problematic in the media, literature, or every-day life.

Marxism

This is me testing the blog for the first time. My real post will come the following week.

Just a thought about "Estranged Labour." As I read Marx's ideas about the correlation between production and alienation, a clear example of this (to me) is the movie "The Help." Obviously, Marx was writing during a time when slavery was a part of the society (1844), and he was perhaps initially motivated to speak out against the ideologies that (for us anyway) are most obviously unjust. Of course he doesn't limit his philosophies to the slave/owner relation of production but extends this idea to many other modes that might not be as apparent to us. I mention this because "The Help" is about civil rights which reflects the struggle that began with slavery. That's probably why it immediately came to mind as I read "Estranged Labour."

When Marx says, "The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces," the products the maids were producing was the upbringing of white babies. These babies were literally the products. As they grew up in this high-class society while black maids served them, they would grow and have children who would hire the children of these maids, continuing the cycle. Also, Marx says, "This fact expresses merely that the object which labour produces--labour's product--confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer...Labour's realization is its objectification." I thought of Skeeter and Hilly, two 20-something white women in "The Help" who have very different perspectives of maids. Hilly, having also been raised by a black maid, was "above" the affection between maid and child, and it's easy to see how she as a product was alienated from the worker who "produced" her. In contrast, Skeeter loved her maid who was fired by Skeeter's mother at the expense of social esteem. Would this be an exception to the idea of alienation between worker and product? However, you could also look at Skeeter not being an exception to Marx's idea but exemplifying it, as she was the one "going against the grain" of society, upsetting the bourgeois/proletariat mode which was ultimately the "solution" (and I use that word tentatively) to civil rights.

Part of the movie revolves around this child-maid relationship and deals with the tokens of estrangement and a loss of reality which Marx discusses. If you haven't seen the movie, I would recommend it. It might be a good touchstone to discuss Marxism in class. In suggesting this, am I a victim (culprit) of furthering culture industry?