Page 29 - Culture Society and the Media

THEORETICAL APPROACHES 19
semiotics of Roland Barthes and Lacan’s reworking of psychoanalysis. The
central and substantive concern has been with the systems and processes of
signification and representation, the key to which has been seen to lie in the
analysis of ‘texts’; films, photographs, television programmes, literary texts and
so forth. Structuralist studies in this area have been closely linked with some
crucial reformulations of Marxist theories of ideology which, although bitterly
attacked by those who have wished to remain on more traditional Marxist
terrain, have played a positive part in by-passing and moving beyond certain
impasses within Marxist accounts of the media associated with the idea of
ideology as a reflection of the economic basis of media industries and society.
Althusser’s reformulation of a theory of ideology, for example, clearly
indicated an important shift in Marxist thinking. Althusser’s view of ideology as
a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals with the real
conditions of their existence moved the notion of ideology away from ‘ideas’
which constituted a distorted reflection of reality. Althusser’s work stressed that
ideology expressed the themes and representations through which men relate to
the real world. For Althusser ideology always had a material existence. It is
inscribed within an apparatus and its practices. Ideology operates here to
interpellate individuals as subjects, ‘hailing’ individuals through the apparently
obvious and normal rituals of everyday living. Ideology, rather than being
imposed from above and being, therefore, implicitly dispensable, is the medium
through which all people experience the world. Although Althusser retains both
the overall form of the base/superstructure metaphor and the notion of
determination in the last instance by the economic he also emphasizes the
irreducibility and materiality of ideology. Determination in the last instance by
the economic is a necessary but not sufficient explanation of the nature and
existence of the ideological superstructures. The media within an Althusserian
framework operate predominantly through ideology: they are ideological state
apparatuses as opposed to more classically repressive state apparatuses. Thus the
effectivity of the media lies not in an imposed false consciousness, nor in
changing attitudes, but in the unconscious categories through which conditions
are represented and experienced.
The combination of Althusserian Marxism and semiotics provided the initial
impetus for sustained work on media texts. By largely suspending the traditional
Marxist concern with the external social and economic determinants of ideology,
in favour of a focus on the internal relations of signifying practices, such as film
or television, structuralist media research formed the theoretical space within
which to carry out detailed textual analysis. The early projects of Screen, for
example, which examined the classic narrative cinema of Hollywood, avant-
garde films and televisual forms, were, whatever their limitations, a very positive
advance over approaches to media content which stressed ‘reflection’ whether in
Marxist or pluralist terms. At the very least, such work showed a continuing
concern to establish the autonomy and effectiveness of particular film and