Research into Ideology and Star Image

Ideology means a set of values, beliefs and ideas that are presented by a media text. Dominant ideologies are accepted and understood by the majority of people as part of our culture and expectations. Some Dominant ideologies are:
Patriotism- to love, support and protect one's country and its people.
Marriage and Family- The "right way" to live is to marry an opposite sex partner and have children.
Male superiorty- Men are suited to positions of power, decision making within work and the home.

Roland Barthes states:

• For ideology to work there must be a set of shared values and myths.
• The only way these codes can become shared is through frequent use in communication i.e. reinforcement. (Media, Newspapers)
• These shared values and ideas are called ‘signs’.
• These signs are then used to realise social values in public forms.
• Every time these signs are used we are maintaining cultural ideology.
• We are formed and socialised via these ideologies; i.e. we identify our membership in a culture by accepting and promoting these signs and myths.
• Therefore the audience of a any medium such as a film or magazine becomes the means or vehicle by which an ideology can be maintained; we ourselves become promoters of values.

Representation can be a single image, a sequence of images or a whole programme. Whatever representations are used there are ideologies and meanings in that presentation. This gives the insitutions power as these representations can influence social attitudes to the audience in many ways.

This links to Stereotypes and Personal Image, Stereotypes are used to understand a text. They are an extreme form of representations. Stereotypes in texts are just 'types' rather than the complex person, they are usually negative exaggerations with a lot of assumptions. Stereotypes occur when there is a power imbalance between members of society, such as: gender, race/ethnicity,  disability and age. Stereotypes help to re-affirm and reinforce dominant ideologies. 

Star Image is when an artist has a unique selling point, which could be their own image to market themselves or a symbol thats consistent with all forms of their branding (on their cd covers, videos, etc).
For example: Will.i.am is known for his iconic logo which he features on his CD album covers, music videos and even on his clothes.
            

 

When creating our music video we have to think about the representations of our artists and how the audience are going to take in our text. We need to think about creating the right 'star' image of our artists in our video, through their chlothing/ general styling, whilst helping the audience understand through the use of stereotyping.