The Hegemonic Domain of a Television Dominated Culture

By: Sufi Mohamed

Television appears as the fundamental area of communicative inquiry. Not only does it aspire to bolster the ideals of advertising and production, it also amplifies the growing trend of a nearing consumer-based culture. Television is the domain of our culture. Television is the source of our increasingly cultural-based heritage. Television promises ideals of happiness, longing, and satisfaction by producing a window of opportunity in successfully conquering challenges and seizing our dreams and goals. Television aspires to be a medium that defines our cultural heritage. Television is the final determinant of where our goals and dreams lie. Without television, we are convinced that these dreams are unreal. With television, we are convinced that the possibility of turning the dream into reality is real. Thus, to adequately sell television to possible consumers, broadcasters (at the expense of enormous outcomes) sell a hegemonic practises.

To adequately understand how television utilizes the modes and processes of an increasingly hegemonic structure, we must first look at the definition of hegemony and the ways in which it will be applied to this analysis. According to Antonio Gramsci (1935), hegemony implies "A social group can, indeed must, already exercise 'leadership' before winning governmental power … it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to 'lead' as well." In Gramsci's definition, hegemony is the result of a higher class deloying ideologies upon the lower classes, thereby ontrolling them at their own bidding. Although this is a more sinister approach to hegemony, that is the basic underlying tone of television. It dominates our cultural atmosphere in that its approach is to bind social codes, norms, and values into something purchasable. Television, according to Gramsci, sells hegemonic beliefs.

One of the key features of television and its ability to deploy hegemony is primarily situated in advertising. Arguably, advertisements merely reflect the desires of our everyday need. Television uses our social codes to get us to consume. Social codes are hegemonic, and reside in our desires. For example, why do women shave their legs? Women do not necessarily have to shave their legs, but media advertisement and repeated bombardment with the concept of beauty has led women to believing that it is preferable, that they would not be beautiful if they hadn't. It is natural to grow hair, yet the media depicts hair on women unnatural. In this respect, television creates "false needs to sell items of little utility," notes Professor Bradley. Here, Professor Bradley connotes that television is merely a factory of false preoccupations. Hegemonically, television emphasizes a different method of organizing the public. This method is primarily advertising. The ways in which advertisers effectively suade the public is through analysis of market trends and what they think the public needs. In this moment of enlightenment arises a product which satisfies this need. Hegemonically, advertisers practise reading this market trend and implicate solutions to what they believe may be out of a loss. With this economic approach to hegemonic production, the facilitation of such ideals becomes the centre for economic progress. Using these systems of potential economic gain, advertisers can use hegemonically in such a way to inevitably create a consumer-based culture.

In its attempt to build a consumer-based culture, television advertisements use stereotypes to reinforce these hegemonic practises. Black people are what white advertisers portray them to be. Methods such as these are not even close to creativity. Advertisers have now relied on a humouristic approach to make people remember their slogans for longer. This influences the hegemony of the culture because advertisers embedded codes into the minds of several thousands. It not only promotes a consumer-based culture, it degrades the hegemonic practises of the very essence of that culture.

Television has an interesting ability to fragment the audience or viewers. With the increasing selection in choice, the modern consumer has the ability to move between different ideas towards another. For example, viewers may change the channel from news to another broadcast, from sports to pornography and vice versa. At any time the viewer can change the channel without any hesitation. Moreover, television is a medium whereby the broadcaster can select his chosen audience and reflect their image back upon them. The broadcaster can dictate the ways in which hegemonic ideas are used upon that group and translate it back to them. For example, in a skateboarding commercial, the broadcaster can use a bunch of guys dressed as punks to describe his/her product. In this way, he targets the groups of punks out there in the culture to purchase this name brand and not another. The goal of the advertiser then becomes the negotiation between various hegemonic practises.

In conclusion, television reflects our hegemonic ideals and self-reflexively shows who we are and what we have become