The Cycle of Ideology
In his essay “The Whites of Their Eyes,” Stuart Hall touches on a lot of ideas that I’ve thought about a great deal in the past. The first that sticks out to me is his perception of ideologies as forces that permeate our society on a systemic level, rather than concepts that individuals create on their own. I agree with this, and have always liked the phrase “societal schema” for such a thing. Seeing as “schema” is a thought pattern that influences the way we perceive the world, it seems appropriate for ways of thinking that we barely even notice ourselves. As Hall describes in his essay, the most dangerous part of this is how we take these ideologies for granted; little boys like rough games and little girls like gentle ones because it’s nature. Few people ever even stop to consider that such an idea may have been artificially constructed within our society.
The concept of ideologies is particularly important in media, hence why Hall wrote this article in the first place. I also agree with him in that media is an important creator of our societal ideologies, but I would also say it’s important to acknowledge that it goes both ways: while individuals echo what they internalize from media, media also reflects the worldview of the individuals that create them. The white supremacist stereotypes that Hall describes aren’t just magically constructed within media. They’re manifestations of the harmful schemas that are already present in public ideology. In this way, harmful representation can become a vicious cycle: impressionable and young creators internalize the racism (or sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism — the list goes on) present within the media they consume and in turn create more media that perpetuates these ideas.
On the more optimistic end of things, though, this cycle can be used advantageously as well. In recent years, there has been an increase in discussion about proper representation, and the climate of media is beginning to change as creators scramble to meet the growing demands for diverse representation. While the product of such demands has not been nearly enough — how many movies about a noble white American soldier gunning down a vicious brown terrorist do we need? — audiences as well as creators are beginning to be more cognizant of the ramifications of fiction, and the push by creators of color for more opportunities certainly doesn’t hurt, either. There’s no denying that media is an important tool in maintaining oppressive mindsets, but if used correctly, it can be just as effective at dismantling such mindsets as well. I only hope that’s the direction we’ll continue to go.
