Hegemony is a concept of leadership or dominance raised by ruling class. In today’s society, people see hegemony as a form of common sense. It is the cultural power raised by authorities, rather than traditional violence and force power. The theory is developed by Marxist theories, along with Antonio Gramsci. The theory of hegemony is based on Marxist theory of ruling class and working class. Hegemony can be defined as the abnormal of the society. For example, the cultural structures are controlled by the dominant class and are delivered to the working class as a common sense. Hegemony is the tool for socially powerful people use cultural influence to let less powerful class to adapt in a certain social structure and culture to achieve the powerful people’s best interest.
The theory of hegemony today usually associates with the concept of ideology. The ideology is how the social structure remains in its form. For example, Antonio Gramsci has mentioned in his article, “Everything which influences or is table to influence public opinion, directly or indirectly, belongs to it: libraries, schools, associations and clubs of various kinds, even architecture and the layout and names of streets”. Stereotyping is actually a form of hegemony, that people shares the same common sense based on a group of person, who being identified by the society. The images provided in media contents are the easiest and most efficient ways for the rest groups of people to learn a certain “type” of human. Different from ideology, hegemony is not constructed to a certain form but a culture power shapes the society’s way of thinking what is correct. Hegemony is also changing and expanding, but cannot be replaced.
In Antonio Gramsci’s article, he argued that the media promote dominant power’s ideology. The media can be considered as one of the most significant tools for building the ideology social structure and promoting that abnormal. Hegemony is the way that media contents promote and encourage people to do. For example, in Stuart Hall’s essay “Encoding/Decoding”, he said’ before this message can have an ‘effect’, satisfy a ‘need’ or be put to a ‘use’, it must first be appropriated as a meaningful discourse and the meaningfully decoded”. This means that the messages that media provided are always used for a certain meaning. The media contents help produce “meaningful messages”, thus, it is important to study hegemony in media study.
Media provides the access for the public to see the society and the world. The media contents with applied meanings could shift the public’s ways of seeing the world. The stereotypes portrayed and messages with meaningful proper provide appropriate models and directions of behaving. For example, the stereotype portray of American family are the in the structure of parents and two children. The general family structure setting in media contents provides an ideal model and a direction in audience’s lifestyles. The public retrieves information and knowledge from media contents in both entertaining media contents like television dramas and serious media contents like textbooks. The media contents sort of give instructions of how a parent, a policeman, a doctor should be looked like. Authorities promote the ideal concept of social order through media by qualifying the meaning of “social responsibility” and “success”. For instance, the portray of “American dreams” in media provides a model pathway to “success” to the public. One example of this would be the famous “quotes” from well-known persons. “. The “quotes” are the meaning sentences delivered by media contents and be used to make motivations to the general public.
Understanding the theory of hegemony and ideology is to see how it works, how it changes, and how it expands. By understanding the concepts, I will be able to find the critical side of media and the messages are given by media. As the example of “traditional American family”, the hegemony of what should a family look like moves. Based on people’s understanding about gender identity, hegemony of a family structure expands to the area that the society generally allows the family with two moms, and two dads and etc. As the hegemony moves, there would always be a subculture that does not fit into the hegemony first, and then become a part of it. The example I could think of is the pop music from Korea. The regional music style becomes a global music genre in the process of transnational production and building global awareness.
Hegemony and ideology is some kind of “reality” comparing to being critical in media study theories. However, the ideal model, structures, normalness, and common agreement in society do not reflect the real “reality” through the media contents. Because ideology defines what is real by itself. In Dick Hebdige’s essay “From culture to hegemony; Subculture: The Unnatural Break”. He mentioned the meaning of myths and signs. He said that myths is kind of speech, and signs usually have a given meaning to it. This argues how ideology and hegemony reflects in reality. For example,the school buildings, that are built up using red colored bricks representing the successful models for education and knowledge. Educational theorist Bart McGettrick in his research says that the design of red bricks led to the exploration of ecclesiastical and monastic typologies. The the “real red bricks” do not have any meanings, despite of giving a meaning by authorities. The high level of educations and institutions represent that “red” color as a form of ideology on what schools looked like. The “red bricks” are the signs.
