Blog: Ideology In Film

What is ideology and how can it be implicit vs. explicit?

"Ideology was a term used in political and economic debate to describe a set of beliefs or principles e.g. socialism or capitalism."  This means that ideology is used to describe ones beliefs into a particular subject. This relates to film because film uses these beliefs/principles in media text to communicate to the viewer. Ideology can be implicit because it's  "debatable meanings of a film, possibly beyond the conscious intentions of the filmmaker, that require analysis and a reasoned argument." This means that some films require deeper analysis than what the film maker intended to better understand the film's underlying meaning.

Ideology and Expectations

Actors like Sam Worthington  exemplify this character that has leadership qualities while maintaining this strong, dedicated to justice type of person. This is shown in movies like Avatar, Terminator Salvation, and Clash of the Titans. In all of these movies, Worthington is able to embody all of these qualities. In Avatar, he is able to live two lives; one of a human and one of the Navi. He eventually rises to be the one who leads the Navi to war against the invading humans and brings them to victory. In Terminator Salvation, although he his part of the terminator side, his main intentions are finding out what his true intentions are in his rebirth. He eventually figures out that his main reason for his rebirth was to aid the resistance in fighting against the robots, while ultimately finding Kyle Reese, the key to their victory. He ends up saving John Connor from death by giving him his heart to live. Lastly, in Clash of the Titans, Worthington embodies this warrior who must face all of these obstacles in order to defy the gods. He kills all of these monstrosities while still being able to live, ultimately finding out that his father is a God and that he is to join them. He denies the invitation in order to stay back and defend his fellow people from future threats. All of these movies show how Worthington ideology lies within the heroic type character, one that he has chosen in many movies and has successfully pulled off.  

Personal Ideologies and the Enjoyment of Film

Marshal Mathers, also known as Eminem, is a famous rapper who took on a difficult role in 8 Mile. What I like about Eminem is that he was able to take on this role of a struggling rapper trying to make it out of Detroit. This movie was a basic story of Eminem's upbringing to become a rapper, and how he had to go through all of these obstacles in order to make his name known. What I mainly like is that he was able to seem naturally emotional in this movie and truly act as if it were real life. Curtis Hanson made the movie to simply analyze the main characters struggles in life, and displayed it magnificently by showing how he had to go through all of these struggles and hardships to get his name out there.  This makes the audience not only sympathize for what he is going through, but also get them emotionally attached to the movie. Hanson intentially did this to ensure that the audience not only understand what it's like to go through all these struggles, but to also feel the main character's pain. By doing this, this leaves the audience in admiration for the main character's determination to reach success, which was Hanson's overall success in the end.

Changing Ideologies

Simple, as time passes, so does our beliefs in a certain thing. When a film is created in a specific time period, it embodies everything around it, such as certain trends, styles, etc. Every decade or so, movies begin to ultimately change. In this era of film, it mainly focuses on special effects and entering the "unknown", rather than simply focusing on the story of a film as once done back in the 1900's. This is mainly due to our growing in new technologies, which help enhance the overall image of a story and make it seem even more realistic.

Ideology and the "Effects" Debate

In this era of film, many films do affect the way I am as a person. With all of these new movies that display such things that we would never see in real life simply amaze me. Transformers, for example, was one of those movies that simply amazed me. Vehicles transforming in giant robots, buildings being destroyed, advanced weaponry and tanks used in combat, all of these things that never are seen in real life are shown in this movie, and makes my imagination just run wild. This film doesn't really affect my behavior, as do others, simply because I understand that things like this may not ever happen, and that a movie is just a movie used to entertain people.

Ideology and Realism

"Some of the ideological assumptions which we make about film are related to whether we believe that the fictional world of a film is real." This is what is know as suspension of disbelief. What this means is that we do not judge whether some is real or not in films, rather we just enjoy it. In movies like Predator, although we know that this film displays things would never happen in the real world, we the audience just simply enjoy it and look at it in awe. This movie shows an alien that entered Earth and kills human. Although we the audience know that things like this may not happen, we admire how the idea of fighting against aliens may look like.

Ideology & ownership

Finances do affect the ideology of a film. A director may have an idea of how a movie may look like, but finances needed to produce a movie like that may restrict it's overall idea. Not only that, it may not come out as intended and sufficiently display it's overall message. When a movie is published in movie theaters, the overall income and satisfaction of the viewer determine whether the movie is a success or not.