Wednesday 31 December 2014

Contextual Studies notes16/10/14

Ideology – Re – Imaging the Everyday.

Image: Map – The Mercutor Projection – an image of the earth used for navigation. This shows a particular view of the world however its not the only view that helps us understand that this is what the earth looks like.









Image : The Peters Projection – to show areas of landmass. It represents how we think about the scale of countries.

nformation + Values = Ideology


Maps are never value – free images… Both in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation, maps are a way of conceiving, articulating and structuring the human world, which is biased towards, promoted by, and exerts influence upon sets of social relations. By accepting such premises it becomes easier to see how appropriate they are to manipulation by the powerful in society”
J.B. Harley –‘Maps Knowledge and power’. The iconography of landscape’


Image: McArthur’s Universal Corrective map of the world – Australia is central in the map as its creator was Australian.


  • Images of the world oftentimes seeming quite straightforward, conventional and natural, usually embody or promote a set of values – that sometimes go unnoticed.


  • An Ideological analysis aims to identify what these unnoticed values are.


  • Image: Black and white photo of a woman’s back and a woman lying on a bed. “These awe inspiring, beautiful photographs of women are extremely oppressive. They fit the old traditions of women as possession and woman as giver and sacrifice.. In this aesthetically veiled form of misogyny, the artist expects his wife to take of her clothing, then he photographs her naked (politely known as nude), and after showing everybody the resulting pictures he gets famous… The subtle practice of capturing, exposing and exhibiting one’s wife is praised as sensitive”. Diane Neumaier on Harry Callahan.




Capital ideology.


  • Image: The Show the Apprentice –


  • Capitalism doesn’t necessarily reflect the full range of human values, but at the same time tend to reduce all values to profit, efficiency and control.


  • Competition - as the key to success / Life as a continual competition: survival of the fittest.


  • The perception of a certain body image as successful.


  • Dominant Ideology – Film poster, ‘War of the Worlds’ starring Tom Cruise.


  • Film Clip: War of the Worlds - “The ideology of (post 9/11) America – The invaders are a wake up call to face fears as we confront a force intent on destroying our way of life: Steven Spielberg.


  • The ideology construction of subject can ‘free individuals’, free to exchange their labour, is important to capitalist modes of production” Louis Althusser.


  • Image: TV – Harmless entertainment / ‘Friends’ – Lulling mass audience into passive inaction.


  • Image : TV – ‘Shameless’ – Channel 4


  • Ideology of class – programmes made on representation of real life made to possible show us ‘how not to live’


  • Image: ‘The Thinker’ – sculpture. As Individuals, we experience ourselves as possessing a consciousness which enables us to freely form our own ideas.


  • Ideology - ‘The Subject’ – Louis Althusser – but this experience is an imaginary + Ideological one, based on misrecognition or misperception – (From Ideology + the Ideological state.)


  • Image: Film – Fight Club – “We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like”.


  • The Self as Construct: The self is constructed within the context of ‘mass culture’ (and subculture) being run by corporations and media.


  • There is a corporate – led basis to identity formation.


  • The ever – present aspect of Western free market countries ideology is consumerism.


  • We are recipients of entertainment, shopping for a self” (Lyon,2000).




On the other Hand:


  • Consumption is the very arena in which culture is fought over and liked into shape.. To manage without rituals [of consumption] is to manage without clear meanings and possibly without meanings”. Mary Douglas, ‘The World of Goods’



Image: Barbara Gruger -





Image: V for Vendetta – Blowing up the house of parliament.


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