Marx & Althusser

For tomorrow’s class we had two readings on Ideology, by Karl Marx and Louis Althusser. In the first reading there is a quote that says, “how to draw a line between ideas originating with the individual and ideology constituted socially is a matter of continuing debate”. Following this quote they gave the example of a husband and wife arguing at breakfast over who burnt the toast, and the author suggests that this is not ideological situation unless an issue with gender role or something along those lines were brought into it. If the husband had said to the wife, “How could you burn the toast…your only good for one thing and that’s cooking”, that would not only be completely degrading and rude but it could also be seen by some as ideological, because many used to and some still today, believe that women are there to be the homemaker and men are the provider. Another example I thought of after seeing this example was how most of the female characters in Disney movies, such as Cinderella, are portrayed as this ideological woman (small waist, beautiful, long hair etc). Little girls watching will start to believe they have to look like this, along with boys thinking that girls should look like this.

After reading “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus” by Louis Althusser, I found an interesting sentence: “What is represented in ideology is therefore not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live”. I thought this was interesting because it reminded me of what infomercials do. There are so many examples where an infomercial has pitched anything to lure people into buying their product, going as far as creating imaginary and false situations, which people will then relate to real situations. This makes people not be able to tell the different between what is real and what is fake- this relates to Jean Baudrillard and his idea of ‘simulacra’ because with the simulacra it is hard to tell what is real and what is fake as well.

“on my honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized assistance on this work”