Mass Media Text Coursework
Introduction
'Friends', is an American television sitcom produced by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired from 1994 right through to 2004, all together lasting 10 seasons. The entire series is based on five characters all talking about their friendships and romances they encounter throughout their daily lives. However, the television series rarely brings us to the importance of race, gender and class, something which could easy have been developed.
Television plays a very important part in today's society, after all, it's what a large number of people spend their spare time doing. Television almost creates a connection from the outside world to our living rooms (Fiske, 2003; Press, 1991). This is a very important
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In order for a series to stay popular, especially after 10 seasons, it needs to reach a wide variety of people. By Friends discussing the importance of friendships and romances, they are able to reach common grounds with the viewers, which is inevitable for a television series to succeed, which is the main reason why it is still discussed and watched 12 years on. The reason why I chose this specific mass media product, is because Friends should be studied to locate deeper connections between relationship, televised messages and their connections to our …show more content…
Cultural hegemony is the idea that the ruling class can manipulate the system and society, so that their view, becomes everyone else's. In Eagleton's words, “Gramsci normally uses the word hegemony to mean the ways in which governing power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates”, this shows how much of an influence the ruling class has over it's working class citizens.
Hegemony is an extremely critical theory as it's constantly analysing the social practices and the “distribution of power in society”, (Littlejohn and Foss, Theories of Human Communication, 2005). The term hegemony, is vastly used by media researchers to exhibit ways that texts represent the dominant ideologies of society on television (Bertrand and Hughes, 2005). Littlejohn and Foss described the relationship of hegemony and mass media as “ dominant ideology perpetuates the interests of certain classes over others, and the media obviously plays a major role in this
The media is a powerful tool and has the ability to influence and change one’s overall perspective of the world and the position they play in it. Although Television shows such as Friday Night Lights are seen as entertainment by consumers, its storyline contributes to the social construction of reality about class in the United States.
In the article “TV’s Callous Neglect of Working- Class America” written by Noel Murray explains the modern day TV shows un-relatable plots to Americans today. Murray describes how shows in the ‘50s through the ‘90s were relatable to Americans and how they lived their lives. The TV shows then were able to get such great reviews because the jobs the actors had in the shows were average money making jobs. The characters are meticulously when it came to how they used the money they earned. However, as the years have passed, the shows that are on today are not as relatable to Americans. The shows express the fantasy, perfect life that everyone strives to have, but in reality, it is not possible for every family. The programs on today do not convey the difficulties that average Americans face each day, causing the shows to become more and more relatable to average TV viewers.
The media, through its many outlets, has a lasting effect on the values and social structure evident in modern day society. Television, in particular, has the ability to influence the social structure of society with its subjective content. As Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert write in their article, “GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION”, the basis of our accepted social identities is heavily controlled by the media we consume. One of the social identities that is heavily influenced is gender: Brooks and Hébert conclude, “While sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to understand and perform gender is based on culture” (Brooks, Hébert 297). With gender being shaped so profusely by our culture, it is important to be aware of how social identities, such as gender, are being constructed in the media.
As a group, we believe that popular culture does in fact perpetuates stereotypes. Television is a main source of information of popular culture. Television has forever changed how humans have interacted with another and introduce a world of diversity and knowledge. But with this profit, television has also harbored negative aspects. As a group, we studied how racial stereotypes are portrayed in television. In the history of television, different racial and ethnic groups have been widely underrepresented and television itself has been overwhelming represented by white figures. And when racial groups are presented on TV, the characters are often played in limited roles based on stereotypes. A stereotype isn’t necessarily untrue, but it is an assumption based on an incomplete and complex ideas that are oversimplified into something that isn’t what it meant to be, and it’s usually negative. For example, African Americans are often depicted as violent or involved in some kind of criminal activity. Their characters often portrays a person who is always sassy and angry or that isn’t intelligent and won’t succeed in life and inferior to whites in some manner. Asian characters are
The media is a powerful tool. It can help shape our identity, behaviour, and our view of the world. Everyday we are shown new images, videos, and other materials, through television, newspapers, social media and many other forms of the media. These images and videos influence people without them noticing they are being influenced. It is important to be able to criticize and analyze what the media is telling us. Degrassi is a Canadian drama franchise. After doing some research I was able to find how the television show “Degrassi” has strongly contributed to social change through their show, as they cover many cultural studies’ issues. More specifically, they have had characters who model the transgender, lesbian and gay, characters of varying
Foss goes on to explain that multiple ideologies can co-exist within any given culture, but the privileging of some ideologies over another results in a phenomenon called hegemony. The consideration of hegemony is what makes ideological analysis critical - as it employs a Marxist flavor in confronting how the ideologies of the dominant group prevails over the ideologies of groups with less power. Hegemony fosters social control as the dominant group determines the dominant ideologies of a culture that
O’Shaughnessy, M., Stadler, J. (2009)Media and Society: An introduction. Dominant Ideology and Hegemony. London: Oxford.
Two of the three friends fell in love with each other after years of hatred for one another. Their relationship grew, but sadly, near the ending of the show, they broke up. This show had everyone watching full attention because of the plots with the growth of the unusual couple. The continued plots made the show great because people were very interested in
In most well developed societies there is always an issue with the unequal division of power with the wealthiest people having the most and the poorest having the less, which causes tension amongst the people in the society. The people with the most people can also be seen as the most dominant group, and one way they are successful at maintaining their power is through the use of hegemony. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, hegemony is the “influence or control over another country, a group of people, etc”, in other words it is a system that is often used by the dominant group, used to spread their ideologies and maintain its control over another less dominant/powerful group. In the article “Gramsci’s Political Thought” by Roger Simon and Stuart Hall, the authors
Introduction Class divides have always been present in human society, whether it be through socio-economic standing, race, or gender. By embodying such an array of forms, class divides can be found in almost every facet of our lives, from the way we eat to the way we dress to even the way we relax. Class, as defined by Lynn Spangler, a professor of communication with current research on social class in television at New Paltz SUNY, class is defined by where one fits in occupation, education, income and wealth. Once situated, one is divided into the top fifth, the lower fifth, and the great middle area, which contains the upper middle, middle, and lower middle levels. This article reviews literature on class in the media and television domain,
Powercube.net. 2014. Hegemony and invisible power | Understanding power for social change | powercube.net | IDS at Sussex University. [online] Available at: http://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/hegemony-and-invisible-power/ [Accessed: 23 Mar 2014].
Gauntlett, D. Hill, A. BFI (1999) TV Living: Television, Culture, and Everyday Life, p. 263 London: Routledge.
According to D Gauntlett (2008), Media and communications are a central element of modern life, whilst gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities. In modern societies, people spend more hours for watching television, look...
Media is used by dominant powers to spread their ideological beliefs and to help maintain social control. Althusser (1971) explains that, as an ideological state apparatus, media doesn’t use pressure as a way to bind society together under one dominant ideology, but instead uses the will of the people to make them accept the dominant ideology. However, media is also used as a way for people to challenge the dominant ideology. Newspapers, for example, will have articles that openly criticise and oppose the dominant ideology for what it is, whilst at the same time providing perspectives and opinions on different ideologies (such as feminism) that society can believe in. Although these alternate ideological perspectives exist, they are usually overlooked and only ever reach small audiences. Ideology can also help us understand the media because of the way in which it distributes ideology. A lot of different types of media, such as film and TV; reflect different ideologies, though we are not always aware that they are doing so. An example of this would be action/adventure films, which shows that using force or violence to solve problems is acceptable and reflects upon certain ideologies. This helps us to understand the media because the ideology that is reflected in these films is capable of reaching big audiences through the use of TV and film, thus allowing for it to become a more common belief within