LECTURE 4 - CRITICAL POSITION ON THE MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE

• triangulate between , authentic culture, true culture, mass culture
• Disciplines of cultural studies - particular British scholars, Critical theory which is German Marxist
• If you think of culture of ideological then how does this affect society and its relation. 

• If you were to ask what is culture - one of the 2 or 3 most complicated words in the English language. 
• Simplify it 
• process of interlectual societies development through history, their growth, as they grow they become cultured. The process of interlectual development
• Describe a way of living, a sub culture has a set of values and way of thinking about the world. 
• Describe a cannon of really important artworks or works of literature. Works by Shakespeare, Da Vinci etc. At various points they are accepted as important points in history and the significance they represent so are accepted as part of a culture. 

• Marxist - have a particular class or works of relations and because of this a superstructure forms and which culture is a part of it.
• Culture, ideology and ways of thinking about the world evolve

• Culture emerges from the base and then almost legitimises and makes possible the base relations of production
• Quote - culture could be a site of policitcal / ideological conflict

• How POPULAR culture is talked about - very different answers from if you just think about culture
• The 4 definitions are fundamentally different
• 1st - the idea that POP culture is quantitatively measures, well liked by lots of people = popular culture e.g. Dr Who - however the problem with such an analysis is that it least to a varied results e.g. Shakespeare - well liked by many people but it is strange to call it popular culture. 
• 2nd - somehow a lesser or inferior form of real / high culture form e.g. arts, philosophy, ballet etc. So work that is mass produced. 
• 3rd - works that aspire to be inporant normally fail. Anything that aims to be popularist. Work that is elitist, less understandable is somehow more important, there is an elitism to both of these judgements. 
• 4th - culture made by people for the people, an organic root of popular culture. EG working class popular culture would be brass bands which are made by the people and symbolises them to show their idendity. 
• You need a taste maker to decide what is good and what is bad, as soon as you go into this you start the idea of IDEAOLOGY - making judgements on a large scale for the masses. With this you normally have a clash judgement. 
• These definitions are political

• You can find such attitudes - you get concepts of popular press and the quality press. THey have different contents and different linguistic codes. You get popular cinema, and then foreign language and art cinema.
• The latter is always aimed at speaking to the elite strap of society.

• LEFT - work of HIGH culture - shows the insignificance of man in the power of GODs universe - makes you question the cantien sublime
• RIGHT - doesnt make you question the cantien sublime. No one would talk about this in the powerful terms. Why don't people ask those sort of questions. 

• Examples of using popular culture of using the 4 definitons
• Top Left - mural of Body Sans, 
• They are examples of artifacts by Jeremy Deller called the FOLK ARCHIVE - they went round the country looking for examples of authentic popular culture - if you walk around the first thing you do is laugh, then look like poor attempts at creating art (why can you do better and why are you making judgements about what is good) We are coded in a certain way about what is good and what isn't. You have to start asking where these institutionalised ideas have come from. To judge by your aesthetic way of thinking is floored. 

• What happens when a pop culture is made by the people, enters into the spheres of high culture e.g. grafitti - started out as an expression of ghetto youths - a language which they have invented. What happens when that is translated into mainstream western culture and placed in galleries - does this change grafitti?
• Banksy - made a design on the wall, someone knocked down the wall then sold it to a gallery and is now being exhibited
• It is now being incorporated in the view of the few
• The dynamics between culture and popular culture is very complicated. 

• Concept of popular culture emerging to culture
• PRior to maternity - society had a common culture, on top of this there was a tiny culture for the elite. The first time this changes is with industrialisation and urbanisation - described well in "the making of the English working class". For the first time people are condensed together as a mass but clearly separated. Working class together in factories but separated from Bourgeoisie. As industrialisation happens you have a clear division between the classes - area of living in the cities. 
• You get a physical disticntion between the rich and the poor. This seperation starts to create a cultural seperation so the working class start to auther their own culture. They still eed things to amuse themselves - they create their own cultureal forms and activities (pub, binge drinking, playing piano, own form of literature and music). 
• In this period (late 19th century) you start to see a working class voice which is very different form the Bourgousie. Now you have two competing voices. NOt just art, design and literature, also talking about Politics - Chartism - campaine for the working class being able to vote.  They start writing their own culture and thinking about how it should be organised. 

• The first form of cultural studies starts to emerge. 
• This book is one of the first books written about culture as a dicipline itself. 
• He tried to define what culture was / is. 
• It is about ARNOLDISM - way of thinking. He wants to define what culture is. Quote ' the best that has been thought...it is about perfection and about finding truths"...the only way you can do htis is through disinterestered reading, writing and thinking (without and andgenda). Any culture that has an agenda (political) is not true culture because it is biast
• The persuit is important - quote - the opposite of culture, the anorchy - this emerging working class culture that seeks to have its own voice heard

• Quote - if you teach them about stuff then they can be brought into the upper class culture rather than just starting their own one. 
• Quote - they were once hidden but now they are coming up and marching where they like. Definite class division. 
• The theories emerge when the control of the upper class is threatened by the emergence of a new culture.
• Now a view that the upper class culture is better than the lower class culture. It attempts to legitimise the culture of the upperclass and mock the culture of the working class. 

• Became a cult figure - lots of people attended lecture were attended and lots of followers. Spawned from historians, cultural, theorists
• ARNOLISM - book "Mass Civilisation & Minority Culture
• seen a gradual duming down of culture - he thinks that at a point the culture was perfect - when everything was right and everyone did what they were told do.
• For him, throughout the 20th century there was a gradual decline. There has always been an elite - he feels that he needs to defend culture against it dumming down.
• quote 2 - for him that is bad, tradgic, that culture is coming down and challenges the rise of popular culture e.g. fiction, musical plays
• The collapse of authority comes at the same time as the rise of the working class

• Constantly talking about how culture was and what desirables there are to be now. 
• Finds ways of proving points - popular novels offer cheap emotional thrills
• They say popular culture is addictive like drugs, and real culture is fullfilling. 
• Quote - their genuine culture makes you think about the world and life and the universe, the working class culture, culture of the masses does none of that and just is a form of distraction.

• You still see this now - snobbery - e.g. TV programs - X-Factor, Big Brother, - examples of authentic working class culture. The snobbery which people dismiss these programs. 
• Their readings of high culture as disinterested is totally interested (has an agenda) as the culture they are trying to dismiss. 
• Institue of social reserach 1922-1933 - closed down when the NAZIs came to power. Here they were MARXIST thinkers - they relocated the Frankfurt school to New York temporarily. 
• They were studying the mass culture - wrote alot on radio, TV, Film - when they went to the US they entered a place that was the most developed in terms of popular culture. Hyper extended scale (Hollywood) advertising and consumer culture. As people were analysing capitalism it was a perfect place to be. 
• Those are the 5 most imporant writers about it. They described the emergence of the CULTURE INDUSTRY.

• The CULTURE INDUSTRY - there is an idea of culture but it is isn't there - culture that is produced in a factory. 
• At that time there was the growth of mass production - FORDISM - they equated that process to the growth of culture. There were various different art / cultural artefacts were produced on mass, all are the same. 
• QUOTE - films are knocked out to set standards, sold as commodities, it means that people start to expect the same things from films e.g. the other quote. Culture that is mass produced - movies and radio no longer pretend to be art, the truth is now they are a business which they can now justify themselves for the rubbish they now produce. 
• quote - the idea of art / culture under capitalism has been turned into a business, so all notions of art has gone, now masquerading as culture. 

• As you start to consume this (same TV, film, Radio) it starts to code us into thinking about the world in a certain way. 
• Quote - this sort of stuff causes us to be 1 demential - reduces the capacity for free thought. We are locked into a system where were are bound into the producers of the industry. 
• Arnoldists and Levidisets were concerned about mass culture because it represented them a threat to the working class - working class could over throw them? 
• Frankfurt school - they think that mass culture is bad because they think it cements you, and codes you into a way of thinking in the world eg. if all the tv shows are about dancing rather than politics, race, society - you don't think about them, and denys you the opportunity to fight back. It de-politicalises the working class. 

• You have a sense that there was such a thing as REAL culture that have some how been lost
• Makes you active when you consume it, makes you think
• Individual rather than mass produces and independent, it writes it own rules. 

• HOLLYOAKS - the women are presented as objects - depoliticies women and makes them think that this is ok. It becomes a symbol - it has been marketed, re-branded and repackaged (CHE) - loses the sense of revolutionary. 
• Big Brother / X factor - instead of being an activists you can sing a cover of a song - then judged. It de politicises you that you can succeed in world just by singing. (and the Lottery)

• People are identifying themselves by the things they buy and own rather than what they produce. Mindless culture. 

• Essay on PoP music (hates it) - thinks that it all the same, works around the same beats, instruments. 
• The less you think about the world, the more you are locked into the social position
• Pop music producers - much of a muchness, listening to such music makes you passive and makes you adjust your behaviour in various ways. Eg. Modern Dance music - kin to the rhythm of the factory, you are a slave to the beat, people mindlessly dance to a rhythm of their own oppression. 
• Also - emotion adjustment, you listen to music as an emotional escape of the horrors of the world. You don't do anything about changing that world. Material girl - every girls fantasy, in dreaming about it you do nothing to change it. 
• Causes you to be counter revolutionary

• Slightly different take - look at essay quote below. 

• The way in which the techniques of mass production change the tequniques of culture. 
• What happesn when you have a painting (MONA LISA) when you can reproduce images of it over and again...what happens to its status and culture. We dont know what the painting is about but we know that it is imporant part of culture
• Now we are in an ache where mechanical reproduction so that we can see examples of this painting everywhere. Perviously we would have to go to the Lourve. Now you can meet the work on your terms. 
• Reactivates the object produced - tremendous challenge to tradition. Threatens to liquidate the culture. 

1. The birmingham school where the first to seriously look at working class cultures. 
2. First people to take popular culture seriously.
3. INCORPORATION - grafitti may have been revelious but now it has been turned into a work of art. PUNK - spoke for the working class and changing the world but now it has become neutralised and incorporated. Lead the an analysis of popular culture 

• Emerges from anxieties about social extensions, the growth of the working class, they attack this new culture as they fear it will threaten them.
• Popular culture is a debased form of a perfect / idealised culture - it is never describe but this is what people think
• POP culture - site of idoeology, masked a popular entertainment, but people need to understand that when they engadge in pop entertainment then are also being involved in masked politics, hidden class interest

SEMINAR 2 - Technology / Mechanical Reproduction

TECHNOLOGY - REPRODUCTION


ESSAY - W. Benjamin - THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION


ORIGINAL / COPY - this dynamic is the important question, fine line
Argument that the copy challenges the status of the original or that the copy produces the idea of the original. 


Mechanical Reproduction - systems of mass production, more specifically the introduction of lithographic print then after that, photographic print reproductions which was new in 1936 - new print inventions. 


THE ESSAY - outline
The effect that reproductive photographic print productions have on art. 
Hitler was in charge of Germany when he was writing this. 
Nazi's doesn't like MARXIST philosophers so it was shut down, he shot himself when he was on the run, just before he died he scribed down all the thoughts that he wanted to get out 'thesis on the philosophy history'
Victim of the Nazi regime and Fascism - he writes against the rise of this. 
The essays is a discussion of humanity instead of art - elements of humanitarianism, sociology, social philosophy. 


Task in Seminar - given a section and read in depth and pick out the main sentences then research further on the internet then give a presentation to the group about what it is about. 


TRADITIONAL WAYS OF LOOKING / THINKING ART ART - AURA

• Traditional
• original
• creativity
• genius
• value
• mystery
• authenticity
• authority

Section II: SUMMARY

In this section Benjamin is referring to the mechanical reproduction of original artworks (like looking at a photograph of van Gogh’s Night Cafe; elsewhere he will be referring to mechanically produced art, such as film) What is lacking in every reproduction of a work of art? An original artwork can claim to be ‘authentic’, but authenticity is outside the realm of technical reproducibility. Why (Benjamin gives two reasons)? How does Benjamin define authenticity on page 221 and how is it jeopardized by mechanical reproduction? What, finally, is ‘really’ jeopardized by mechanical reproduction? What is it that withers in the age of mechanical reproducibility? How and why? Read very carefully at this point. How is the capacity of reproductions to bring objects nearer to viewers related to the rise of mass movements? How does film bring things nearer to ‘the people’?

DISCUSSION OF ESSAY

PREFACE - important and complicated

• Mode of production is a capitalist game
• when you change the base you change the superstructure - over a period of time (Industrial Revolution) the superstructural forms are (ways of thinking, consciousness, art, literature) have not changed yet. 
• Prognostic requirements (remedies for the disease)
• Not speculating what art will look like...
• Analysing what is happing to Capitalist art as a result of productions of change
• Capitalism was very young, ultimately capitalism will create the conditions for capitalism to be destroyed. You are cementing an army that will master and smash the system. 
• OUTMODED CONCEPTS; whose uncontrolled and uncontrollably application will lead to a processing of data in a Fascist sense - they are completely useless for fascism but they are useful in the processes of politics in art 
• creativity
• genius
• value 
• mystery

1ST SECTION

• The idea of something being reproduced (principle) has always existed but the idea of technology means that the reproduction is getting faster and faster
• Greeks - founding and stamping terracotta, coins
• People get more advances, gives a timeline
• Reproductive technological development - as it advances the easier  it gets and the more can be reproduced, now you can reproduce something through the touch of a button or the touch of a hand. Society has found ways to reproduce things more effectively
• Reproductive technology - woodcut, lithography, photography. 
• Gutermberg press - first fix movable type (previously books were written by monks) you could now produce more and more books at a cheaper price, knowledge got spread around the world and access to info was spread meaning more and more people became educated - this is a parallel to the access of reproductions and culture will do for the world. 
• Photograph - makes it possible to reproduce at the blink of an eye, quickly and effectively. 
• Last sentance - relationship between reproduction, art and film. 

POINTS TO PICK OUT - SECTION 2

• This cult of genius relates backs to the cultish characteristics of the aura itself in its absence there is a gravelling for replacement
• a whole new appreciation of art is introduced while at the same time a whole new mode of deception and distraction also enters
• For Benjamin, the aura is dead and it exists in an improbable and mystical place
• In the making of our own myths there in lies an aesthetic interpretation of these reproducible images
• Cameraman for example intervenes with what we see in a way which a painting can never do. It direct the eye to a specific place and specific story a the same time it is radical and revolutionary, it is also totalitarian (relating it to political and humanitarian issues at the time - limiting peoples thoughts, a form of propaganda)
• 'Bust this prison world'
• 'with the close up / space expands  / slow motion - the movement is expanded
• 'Reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject'
• Reproductions are showing people how to see rather than letting people interpret and see what they do from their own will - they are limiting view points and interpretations
• even the most perfect works of art lack the presence of time and space - the unique existence of the place where the artwork was created. 
• The chemical changes over time are an important influence to the value of the artwork and you can tell how old an artwork is because of these changes. 
• The chemical changes and the changes of ownership will change over the years - it is impossible to perform a physical analysis of these two factors on a reproduction. 

PART 2 - DISCUSSION

• 'Secondly, technical reproductions can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself...' - makes things accessible to the common person, the opposite to accessible is inaccessible - culture being in acceptable - value, price, exclusivity - certain galleries are in places in the world which you can only travel to if you have the money. Important thing - reproduction allows culture to come to you rather than you go to culture. This relates to the internet (can extend this essay to be about the work of art in digital reproduction)
• Final paragraph - aura - concept that a work of art is more special that it originally would be because of the way you look at art (see the points at the top of the page). In the era of reproduction...all these notions of looking at art start to wither away - it detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. It replaces the 1 with the plethora of many - it reactivates the object that is being reproduces - if you go to a gallery and stand in front of a piece of art, you are given an interpretation of the work of art through the plaque next to it, through the surroundings, the peoples talk etc - an institutions meanings that is forced on you. Reproduction at least gives you the opportunity of your own meaning. The meaning of the artwork is different in different surroundings. 
• The tremendous shattering of traditions - all about giving people their own interpretations of meanings. 
• Reproduction allows you greater access to the world (slow motion, snap shot photography - you can see each different part of the moment)

PART 3

• Perception of the aura changes. No matter how close you are you are always distant from the situation. 

PART 4

• Cult Value - as reproduction becomes more and more prevelant, cult value starts to wither and a crisis is felt in art to which it responds with a theology or art (the study of religion)
• The earliest artworks were CAVE paintings - not meant for display, they were in the darkest bit of the cave.
• Then you have religious paintings which was to show special situations / roll on society. 
• Negative theology - as soon as the art is reproduced 
• Example - mona Lisa at the Louve - already at a Palace so you are at ease, you queue up have a look and take a photo - this takes like a quasi religious experience - parallel - the aesthetics of seeing art in a place etc and religion. 
• Responds with Theology of Art - to and ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes designed for reproductionability. (Arts for Arts sake)

PART 5

• The two different values of art / experiences (cult value (more elitists) and the exhibition value (more accessible) 
• The exhibition value goes down and the commercial value spread. 
• Technology changed the nature of the art - a digitally / mechanically reproduced piece of art is easier to exhibit. A work of art generally stays in the same place (move occasionally for different exhibitions) but if they are on the internet then they are there forever and there whenever you want. 
• Experience for the CULT of art - an exhibition, a social event, class parade where you wear certain uniform
• Photography - exhibition value displaces the cult value, the early photography still holds the aura (portraits) people trying to remember their loved one. PHotographs in magazines have are directed with signs etc so we are being told what to think. On one hand the reproductions are making the photography is more accessible but on the other hand what is being written about the photograph tells you what to think...possibility of a totally different style of art emerging...

PART 6

• Everyone can see the art - it almost forms a group opinion / consensus 
• art is becoming less of an expression and more of a business thing (like graphic design) - it is more produced more for the masses rather than a personal expression - in a gallery you cannot fit everyone in the entrance. 
• Comparing the experience of looking art and looking at film
• Idea of a collective experience (cinema) you collectively come to an agreement which bits are funny, sad etc - but this is not the same as the experience of art - people feel alienated by it to the point that they don't like it and feel that it is rubbish. 

KEY POINTS TO TAKE FROM IT...

• BENJAMIN - all of the noted things (tradition, original, creativity, genius, value, mystery, authenticity, authority, institution) - this is the way art is seen, they give art a certain status which is a privileged status in society, we are told that this is important. It values the idea of tradition and the 1 off, that only one persona can process. Genius traditions of superiority. Resorts to mysterious explications to extends itself. 
• EG Mona Lisa - everyone knows about it but no one knows what it means - you have just been told about its qualities and values. What Benjamin is saying is that mechanical reproduction (digital reproduction) causes you to questions these qualities and if anything allows you to access culture and more voices to write culture. Not only do we get more suspicious of all the QUALITIES - as culture makes it more accessible to us, we start to challenge these qualities and add new meanings (LHOOQ - Marcel Duchamp) you can make gesturers very easily that make comments about these things. 
• YOu can make you own meanings rather than one institutions idea of what art is. We can radically redefine what art is. All of the qualities start to look less important if we go and see it because of the huge amount of reproductions, you don't view it in the same way
• Philosophically - what he is saying that the emancipation of society form people who take structure form a certain elite - they start to think for themselves and start to take ownership and make decisions. EG newspapers online - you read a newspaper story, it is just you and the story, you can decide,; online there are discussions online so you have different sides to the story. Now there are 2 models, 1 person who take the story and then the other people that shape it. 
• PREFACE at end - wrong therefore to underestimate the thesis as a weapon. He is not just talking about art, he is talking about a way of thinking that will destroy fascism. 
• All of the concepts (qualities) make it possible for FACISM to emerge - the idea that a mysterious genius can emerge above you, a great leader. If you accept that there is inequality amongst some people, that there are natural leaders. Benjamin is saying that how could people accept this (NAZI's) and a certain way of thinking. If you have DEMOCRACY - shared information and structure
• In terms of GRPHIC DESIGN - you have  medium for the masses, it speaks to them in a language that they understand - medium for the masses - DEMOCRACY - with all the different software technologies it makes it cheaper and easier for it to be a graphic designer. There is nothing like this to be an artists - still clinging to the elitist view. 
• Political significance of GRAPHIC DEISGN - constructavists immediately turn to GRAPHIC DESIGN - new and NEW technologies to allow people to do this. 
• Limited edition prints with signatures - attempts to re-introduce the idea that graphic design could be more artistic, special and usually more expensive
• SANS SERIF - totally neutral, designed to be just plain, so that people would come to it with an equal understanding of it, it is the ultimate communist / demographic piece of design
• The introduction of a hand drawn type is the reversion back to the individual type 
• Dissertation - the concept of AURA could be quite interesting - web based design vs hand drawn design. 

LECTURE 3 - Marxism & Design Activism (Richard Miles)

AIMS

• to introduce a critical definition of ideology
• To introduce to some of the basic principles of Marxist philosophy
• To explain the extent to which the media constitutes us as subjects
• To introduce 'culture jamming' and the idea of design activism. - looking at the trend of left wing and activist designers. 
• What can designers do to change the world we live in?

QUOTE

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however, is to change it"

Marx, K (1845) 'Theses On Feuerbach

• There is no point thinking without action - to find some kind of synthesis of theory philosophy and thinking and action. 
• Praxis - the unification of thought and action
• A political practice

• Wasnt the most successful plan of attack
• Politics that describes how laberours, workers and bosses were always in conflict
• Invented a particular way of thinking about every aspect of the society and word
• It is a physisolophical method
• Marxism lead to the rise of the soviet union in 1917
• Most of the communist counties took their ideas from Marxism

• Capitalism is the society that we live in - where the control of the ability of the means to make money and prefect is held by a few people - everyone else works to make money for the few individuals.
• It evolves around a market where everything is brought and sold - people as well as shoes and products
• Our interactions evolved around the logic of the market - this is controlled through the exchange of money
• It is a system which makes us (based on individualism) - it is a competition which makes us compete, right from the early days of schooling where you are taught to compete against other people with grades

• Primitive communism - early stages of societies - they co-operated at every single level, they shared everything, there was no such thing as a monogamous relationship, sexual and social freedom. 
• It is only when a system is introduced where some people have more than other people is when GREED is introduced
• The more that is input into the society - the more a HIERARCHY and relations of productions would emerge. Where someone woudl have power and someone wouldn't. 
• FEUDALISM - people own the ability to make money, the super super right who own factories who and create money - BOURGEOISIE - people would start to see the difference in wealth, that it was so unfair that people woud gang together and start a revolution and start a state. Workers confronted with the unfairness of their situation makes them stand up. 

• Another important aspect - the materialist conception of society
• Marx is a MATERIALIST philosopher
• He argues taht society can be broken down into sections - economic - the BASE - this is when at any given moment a society will have certain tools techniques and skills (nucular power plants, workers in number, what skills and machines) - in that base you have relations of productions where people are put into the situation and by accident they end up in some sort of reatino of production - male or female side, black or white side - certain relations emerged and work around the FORECES of production
• Every thing is a result of the FORCES OF PRODUCTION - law, politics, culture, art, design, eduction, philosophy, ideas of family - everything can be traced back to class, gender politics, ratial politics - it bares the stamp
• Relations of production product various situations of society

• BASE - produces the contents and form of the SUPERSTRUCTURE - which legitimises and reflects the form of the base
• One produces the opposite and then the other strengths and builds the producer
• EG - EDUCTION/Schools - the base are bosses, workers - boss telling the worker what to do, so an education situation emerges. At school pupils are taught by a teacher constantly telling the pupils what to do - this then goes onto work places situation where a boss says 'do this do that' and the employee thinks that it is natural. 

• BASE - produces; education, family, politics, mass media. Family - when society were at a primitive stage, just living together, there was no such thing as a monogamous relationship - women were the dominant people (matriark) - the only reason that changed that as society became more developed, more and more food was harvested and they didn't need it, the men started to think about who they can hand down the food and weapons to e.g. to a son - that was the only way men could identify who their children were. 

• Where we are in life we are forced into relations that we don't really need to know about - they correspond to the stage of society that we are at

• Our society from 1917 that we live in - Poster by the American workers organsitation
• The pyrimad of capitalist society - this is how our society operates.
• The ruling class (the queen of England is not in charge)
• Aristrocracy - church, army - 
• The rich owners of investment banks etc think that the Queen is the head of the society
• 'We eat for you' - Bourgousie - the state to manage this class - 
• 'We feed all, We work for all" - they manage through the way they think about themselves or physicalls (shoot them)
• Control the working class through IDEOLOGY - e.g. set up an organised religion - religion teaches us (marxis religion) - teaches us that if we are good and honoourable and dont kick up a fuss, it doesn't matter if you are poor, as long as you are moral, then eventually when you die you go to heaven. A Marxis reading of Religion could show that it is the ultimate trap of thinking. 

• The 2nd connotation of 'ideology' - e.g. religion - they way in which a certain systems of ideas only masks, distorts or selection of ideas - legitimises the impression of certain classes, genders, races - and creates in people a 'false consciousness' - we don't understand the our true relation of society
• False consciousness - there are all sort of ideologies operating around us. 

• Art - always been ideological - people have an idea that art is one persons free expression and that they have to communicate a message to society - but in reality this has never been like this
• Artists were normally from the rich class - they were the only ones that could afford to be educated. Women were not allowed to be educated and not allowed to produce art. This creates rich men are the only ones that are making art
• Rich people are also the only ones that are going to buy the art. So it is actually going to reflect the way the ruling class thinks. Rich people making art for Rich people. 
• STALIN painting - commissioned by the ruler or society, people look at it and start to think that he is a good person when in reality he is a mass murderer. 
• SCULPTURE - It was a message that if you don't behave according to the church (homo or fornicator) they you would be eaten alive by snakes - people making art to train people to think a certain way 

• Most of the pictures are of naked women - most of the artists are men
• "NUDE" - starting to say that they are a work of art not porno or nothing sexual - not really true, bit of a lie

• One of the main writers about IDEOLOGY - not just produced by society, that it becomes a relation, something we live in and something that bonds us to society
• Most of the artists are men, they chose sexually to pain naked women - on the back of that a load of writing occurs about how the painting of naked women isn't sexual - this then feeds into society, people say that 'women have a beautiful form' this is actually born from the ideology
• It becomes a mechanism through the way we live our lives
• Ideology - offers reasons for why we are in our situation 

• There are various different aparatus in society that relfect, create, acceminates and disseminates in society e.g. The Church
• Education is about training you to exists in the way society wants you to behave. It is an ideologyical state aparatus
• The media - is the most important ideological state aparatus - all of the media out there is owned by a super rich media person - the media reflects ideology that is in the world already and perpetuates false conciousness
• Because the media is EVERYWHERE - it is a very powerful way of affecting the way we think and the way we feel - this is controlled by the rich person who ownes it - scary at how much this person has power over us. 

• Rupert Merdoch - boasts that he has the power to control the elections
• Blair cut a deal to relax the monopoly so that he could buy up more stuff - in return they would back the labour party - so the labour party would get into the government.
• Then the Tory party said they would completely relax the monopoly of it - so the Sun backed Tory then destroyed Labour

• Paper which are marketed at the upper class society - they are written in a certain way and has a certain quality to it - the stories are more sophisticated

• The papers for the working classes have covers like this - slang and naked women - the stories on the front cover are about TV, sport, X-Factor etc
• What you are saying - in a common sense - that the working class are stupid - but in reality it is the journalists who are writing this in a dumbed down manner, they are idolosing the fact that all the working class are intersted in is trashy stories. 
• Ideology is more than propogander, it becomes a way of life - working class women start being fed images of beautiful women on display which makes them think that they have to be like this
• It can all be traced back to the base relation of production

• Also they act as judges of those who challenge society 
• Student Protests - get absolute summary judgements of the students as hoolagons - 'brainless' - this is what is going to happen if you let them out
• No discussion of the politics of the situation - just judgements

• An educated man who contradicts the ideologyical movements that all people are brainless - when they talk about the social reasons for he he was accused that he was a rioter as well

• Wonderbra adds - reflect the ruling dominant society - patriatric society - the men are the dominant class
• Most people think about them selves in the way men think about them. 
• The add - as long as you have a wonder-bra (big boobs) you don't have to be educated, you can still shag your way to the top
• The women and the mens road to success is very different

• Ideology - it is a self fulfilling circles, that provides answers for questions that havn't been asked
• Right image - underlying assumption - that all women should automatically sleep with men, if they don't then get them hypnotised. 

• Reach a situation where the strange thing about ideology (e.g. wonder-bra - symbols of success rather than success) we start to identify with these sort of things. We move our relationships onto things, onto what people consume. From this arises the false assumption that workers with 2 cars and colour TV's are not part of the working class. 
• No revolution - tricked into thinking that from what we buy, we have everything, we make ourselves poorer through buying, making other people richer - that we will never gain status in society. 

• FETISH - something that gets in the way of something else, something that is used as a substitute. It acts as a barrier for human sexual relations.
• Fettishize thing - NIKE trainers being cool, then the appearance of the trainers start to become cool rather than you being cool. 

• It can commodify and brand anything. 
• Clever as a marketing tool - idea that you can sell anything as well as it is branded properly. Piking up garbage and putting them in a plastic pocket with Helvetica on it and sells it for $100 a piece!

• Ultimately - our society is grossly unfair - something should be done to change the system of creating money out of nothing. 

• Since 1989 all the COMMUNIST countries have dissolved and we have now got a society where society has judged which class is the best and that it is going to stay that way. 
• Exiting times for a Revolution.
• At the moment there is no class conciousness

• Increasingly people don't consider themselves to be workers - most people work in jobs where things are immaterial - don't create a car, you create something less tangible - so people forget that they are part of the working class. 

• Condems the young and the poor
• No chance for the young to go to college and get an education unless they pay a load of money
• Pensioners - that they are going to take all their money away

• Social movement occuring through MEDIA - 

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