Ideology: further reading and tasks

The World of Mockingjay

The ideology that has been told in this article about 'The World of Mockingjay' is the differences between the poor and rich people in society. In the context section, it talks about how the poor people live without so much food etc and then linking it to the film (Hunger Games), it starts to talk about every year, 2 people get the chance to live the game where it is a last man standing game. The way to win this game is that you have to kill of the other person. In society, people would believe that this is wrong and fake because this would never be a case where this would happen and hardly, a poor person would get a huge opportunity where as the rich person would. Therefore, this section is telling the opposite ideology.

From all of the Hunger Game trilogy, the Mockingjay is the one movie out of them all that is all about the media; It can either be a movie that anyone can just watch and will be able to enjoy it or it's a movie where many people in society can have their own different belief that can be very negative. A binary opposition that can compare the two different audiences could be 'rational' and 'emotional'. I have chosen these two is because you can either have a person would just watches movie for entertainment or you have people that watch movies that just want to pick out the negatives about it and relate it to reality. Therefore, I believe that this is the ideology that the audience believe in as they have their own power.

They Live

The four accepted ideological beliefs written in this article are the following:

• Money = Happiness
• Consumer  goods = Fulfillment
• Marriage/Family/Children = Happiness
• Obedience/Work = Fulfillment

Gramsci's theory of hegemony

Gransci defined hegemony as an important way in which those in power maintain their control through consent, rather than the use of force. He argued that the power of ideology derives primarily from ideas and structures which support, and thus serve the purpose of, an elite social group which is able to dominate through ideas, rather than militaristic strength or fear.

Therefore, the way that I believe that this is creating power in society is because people across the media have come up with their own consumption's and if people believe that what this person is saying is true, then more and more people would start to believe that individual which would therefore create more power.

French theorist Louis Althusser

This theorist talks about how family, the media etc are the most common sorts of ideologies as we live through it everyday. The ideology of consumerism dominates and drives society. This is where the bigger idea of Althusser's theory comes in. He talks about how we should buy more goods and buy as much as we can because this is what makes everyone more happier in life as it is 'natural'. Therefore, the ideology in this article is about 'goods'. Some people may think that goods is the path to being happy which is talked about in the article. However, people may disagree with this because they may think that other things are the path to happiness.