Ron Burgundy, Marx and Althusser

In preparing for our Thursday class, we looked at Marx and Althusser, with their concept of the all important ideology. Having studied the concept of ideology and the apparati in several classes before, I felt confident in understanding the readings and was able to recall earlier readings which had similar ideas on the topic. One of the most interesting things involved with ideology is the concept of hegemony and the power of the ruling class in constructing ideology. The concept of hegemony was originally coined by Lenin and later adopted by Antonio Gramsci in explaining his fascination with the power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church (35). According to the “Reader”, hegemony “specifies ideology as ways a ruling group, bloc or class must rule by winning consent in conjunction with the threat of force, the effectiveness of hegemony depending on how rarely force, always present, actually has to be used” (35). In other words, hegemony is the perpetuation of dominant ideologies constructed/developed by the ruling class sometimes by persuasion and other times by force. The ruling class, which usually consists of those members of society with the most affluence and therefore most control, create meaning and ideologies which serve their interest, usually economically driven. The lower classes, without out much money and consequently without much say, are exposed to these ideologies and usually just accept them as the “norm”, or at least forced to deal with them, internalize them, and eventually accept them. When I took the course The American Dream in Popular Culture, we examined various popular films within our culture and analyzed the types of “American Dreams” that were present in the films. In every single film it never failed that the ideology that was the “American Dream” was reflective of a dominant ruling class ideal that benefit their interests above all. The films attempted to blur economic and social lines but in the end only proved that no such things really happen in real life, a reality that keeps the lower classes in their place and perpetuates the idea of the power of the ruling classes. This idea of the “battle of the classes” that is inherent with the idea of ideology and hegemony closely ties to Habermas' concept of the “culture wars” that exist between the high culture and the conventions/virtues of everyday life. In discussing ideology, hegemony, and the culture wars, its easy to see a connection. Ideologies of the appropriateness and normality of “high culture”, another ideology created by the dominant class, are perpetuated on to the “lower culture” to replace their “lower class” culture and ideals, therefore creating a “culture war” that really just involves the upper class dominating the lower. One of the greatest examples of the dangers of ideology and hegemony in history is the Holocaust. During this time, the dominant ruling party, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Regime, were able to create arbitrary constructions of the Jew as the sign of evil and the blame for the problems in Germany. They created dangerous ideologies of what the dominant culture should be and look like and because of their power and influence practiced hegemony to get even those unassociated with his regime to follow and accept his ideas. In evaluating this type of hegemony, it is easy to see that coercion and not consent were dominantly used to enforce the ideologies and were the main reason it was able to be resolved and seen as an ultimately evil and wrong occurrence (think if perhaps force was not as necessary in perpetuating the type of ideologies that existed during this time, there would be less people who saw it as wrong because they instead would have accepted the ideology as the “norm”, less people would have been in the fight against the Nazi regime). In reading about ideology and hegemony one has to wonder about the dominant ideologies at work in your life now, and whether or not you are conscious of these ideologies or just accepting these ideas and living your life in accordance with the norms of the dominant ruling class.