User:Niek Hilkmann/Reading, Writing & Research Methodologies 2012/2013 - Trimester 2

Cultural Hegemony

Make notes on how Gramsci developed Marx’s idea

The Marxist analysis of economic class is being developed by Gramsci to comprehend social class. This implies that cultural hegemony is not only evoked by money and power and is therefore not necessarily constituted by those who have it. There is a dominant social elite at work instead.

Posit your own definition for cultural hegemony

Cultural hegemony implies the universally valid dominant ideology, the worldview that is imposed and accepted as the cultural norm. It is dominated by a certain elitist class who spread ideas, habits and preferences through their position on other classes.

Speculate on how cultural hegemony might operate in the contemporary world... consider Chomsky’s use of the ‘propaganda model’. Can we consider the recent occupy movement and similar movements as countering cultural hegemony? If so, in what ways do they do this?

Gramsci proposes that the most effective way of wielding power is to build consent by ideological control of cultural production and distribution, for instance: the media. Chomsky uses the 'propaganda model' to explain the political function of the mass media in propagating and maintaining the dominant ideology of the select group in power. Popular media, like newspapers, in this respect act as agents to legitimize the chosen dominant ideology. Nowadays non-dominant alternative cultures, which you see in the Occupy movement, try to grab attention by using 'social media'. The world wide web is often being talked about as a sort of alternative version of the world we live in, where all information and sub-cultures are easy to find and equally represented. Fact is that there are certain websites and web-applications that have a bigger audience and provoke more credibility. In other words: They constitute cultural hegemony just as easily as the original newspapers had. The Occupy movement still needs to be deemed news-worthy by some of the ruling information-distributors before having an effect. When the movement fails to grab legitimate attention, they fail to be represented in the 'social sphere' and are ruled out.

Media Object

I am going to write about the reissue. There will be a focus on its distinction from the reproduction. My example case are going to be video games from an analogue age that are being sold and distributed again through digital means in current times. For instance, the 'Virtual Console Games' for the Nintendo Wii and 3DS. The research will focus on three main aspects: The actual history of videogame distribution and the 'reissue in general' (1), the implications of remediation in a reissue and what is created in the process (2) and the notion of a canon created by marketing and the creation of a retro-chic videogame esthetic (3). All this with regard to digital media and the role emulators and distribution of information on videogames create.

Transmediale

A little story about what I perceived.