The study of ideology is quite important to the study of popular culture!

Ideology | So what's it all about?

This kutty little series that borders on critical theory, would serve to be a prop or a primer to those of y’all who’d love to have some added perspectives to better versions of realities!

And this series is exclusively for my students, past and present, and also for those lovely friends and colleagues of mine, who mail me or call me up or ask me in person, to give y'all a few elaborations or explanations on some of those high-octane concepts in critical theory!

As an addendum or subscript, let me also make it clear right at the very outset, that me ain’t a connoisseur in theory! There are scholars who, like Francis Bacon-ji have taken all knowledge to be their province! The ocean out there is so vast and my pavapetta boat feels so lost! But this little boat-full that I have, or ‘the five loaves’ that I have, I so love to share! As, in this, I am so convinced, that, we grow and we grow by sharing and sharing! And as usual, please use the Contact Form that you find to the right of this post, for any of your doubts/ suggestions and clarifications! I shall be glad to reply to them all as early as I possibly could!

So here we go –

‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ is an axiom!

‘A whited sepulchre,’ is an idiom!

‘Tip of the iceberg,’ is a metaphor!

All three could possibly connote or imply to mean that, the outside may look pretty good, while on the inside, or beneath it, or within it, the reality may not really be that good!

And this is exactly where critical theory steps in!

As Peter Barry says, ‘theorists believe that all thinking and investigation is necessarily affected and largely determined by prior ideological commitment.’

That means, all our thinking is always already conditioned and affected by ‘prior ideological commitment’!

Or to put it simply, we and our thinking processes are always conditioned by ideologies that ‘possess’ us and never refuse to leave us alone!

Or to put it still shorter, human beings are then, ideologically-conditioned beings!

[Don’t search for this last term on the www! I’m afraid it’s really not gotta be anywhere there!] ;-)

So yes! Let’s call ourselves ‘ideologically-conditioned beings,’ because, theorists would want us to know that all our thinking is always already conditioned and affected by ‘prior ideological commitment’!

And this ‘prior ideological commitment’ has a great say and sway, in determining or fixing all our ‘realities’ for us!

So if we were to re-phrase those immortal lines from Act II Scene 2 in the Bard's Hamlet,

Nothing is good or bad! Ideology makes it so! ;-)

Now I guess, at this particular juncture, we could easily understand what Peter Barry tells us, [Beginning Theory], in his first major idea on critical theory, that, many of the ‘basic givens’ of our existence – including our gender identity, our individual selfhood etc – are actually unstable things, rather than fixed and reliable essences.

In other words, all the ‘basic givens’ of our existence are in fact, ‘socially constructed’, dependent entirely on social and political forces and on shifting ways of seeing and thinking. In philosophy, these are called contingent categories (temporary, provisional, circumstance-dependent), rather than fixed and absolute ones!

And since our realities and the ‘basic givens’ of our lives are almost always already conditioned by ideologies, it goes without saying that, the study of ideology is quite important to the study of popular culture.

One reason why, James Carey has even suggested that ‘British cultural studies could be described just as easily and perhaps more accurately as ideological studies’. More on ideology, on our past post HERE!

Although there are many definitions to the term ‘ideology’, the predominant term would mean to define and refine ideology as,

A certain masking, distortion, or concealment! (shall we henceforth call it the whited sepulchre syndrome!)

So what does it mask? What does it distort? What does it conceal? What does it hide?

Yes! You guessed it right! It masks, distorts and conceals ‘reality’ by continuously giving us all ‘distorted’ images and masked versions of reality!

Or in other words, they have the ‘power’ to produce in the pavapetta proletariat, a ‘false consciousness’.

So what is this false consciousness? To Friedrich Engels ‘false consciousness’ was a ‘powerful’ weapon used by the ruling class, to willfully subordinate and control the working class by imposing their ideologies on them! [You may also want to look up our past post on the deadly combo of Ideology and Hegemony HERE ]

As a result, the subjugated, suppressed, subordinated commoner [or] the lay, [or] the proletariat are in a precarious predicament wherein they are not even able to recognize for themselves the innumerable forms of inequalities, oppressions, and exploitations practised on them, the pavapetta guinea pigs, because the ruling ideology of the ruling class has been so subtly and deftly naturalized and legitimized into them all, with such surgical precision! Like the Tamil proverb goes, ‘subtly and quietly injecting a needle into a ripe banana!’

Wherein lies the success of ideology! 

Therefore, because of this ideological conditioning that has enslaved them, the pavapetta proletariat are not able to even perceive their real position in society! As a result, they fall a willing prey to all the 'capitalist' wiles and deceits that are so subtly and deftly practised on them every day in all of the ways, through any many means! 

The sway of advertisements, or the agendas of marketing, or the 'power' of those shoals of apps that have found a safe haven in our cell phones, that act as prying gawkers and subtle thieves lurking within our own carefully guarded, personally controlled, cell phones themselves, to steal and to make use of all our prime data, precious data, with our own implied permission and consent, not with our manifest consent, but rather with our manufactured consent, all our precious valuable data, are all examples to this sway of ideology over us all, in our everyday lives! [You may want to read our past post that reads on a similar note, HERE!]

Georg Lukacs in his famous book titled, History and Class Consciousness, (1923) says that, this ‘false consciousness,’ which forms ideology itself, is not a simple error but an inevitable illusion or a maya which cannot be dispelled!

So what do these distortions, these manipulations intend to do? 

Very simple! These distortions, these manipulations serve to work in the interests of the powerful against the interests of the powerless!

And interestingly, the  beauty of ideology’s manipulative power lies in the fact, that ideology skillfully conceals the truth from the pavapetta proletariat or the powerless, that they have been victimized or made scapegoats or they've been made guinea pigs in the process! In other words, the subordinate or the subordinated classes do not see themselves as oppressed or exploited at all!

Just have a look at anyone who's so obsessed with any of these apps, or happily whiling away their time in their social networking sites, with what Charles Lamb would call, 'busy-idle diversions,' and then you would know how this crafty, wily and treacherous power of ideology has made the proletariat a 'passive being' who will continue to be their consenting slaves, happily charmed by their ideological spells for as long as they live!

And that's exactly what the capitalist wants you to do! To be under their magic spell! 

One example that we could all easily relate to, would be the thousand and one videos that come to us everyday on social networking sites, which we watch with such devoted attention, pleasure and joy, little realizing that, we are being slowly wooed and caught in a gigantic bait by the ideologies of those who wish to exploit us!

Any video(s) or any news that comes down to us, be it through the TV, the Cinema, the newspapers, facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc are all ideologically conditioned tools, that have the power to condition, to fix and to distort our realities for us! 

The main reason why Noam Chomsky has been conveniently avoided, ignored and forced into oblivion by any of these above giants! 'Cos he was one of the very few to have warned us long long back about the perils and pitfalls of them all! [For more on the nexus between language and power, you may want to read our past post HERE!]

As Lewis Hyde in his lovable book titled, The Gift tells us, ‘There ain't no such thing as a free lunch,’ which means to say that it is impossible to get something for nothing!

And there lies the power of ideology, dear ladies and gentlemen,

in pretending to give us something for absolutely nothing! ;-)

to be continued...

images: ncpolicywatchdotcom, academicdotuprmdotedu