Movies

Movies have been around since the late 1800s. They have grown from 7 minutes
to hours long. In today’s world, movie franchises have become a huge part of pop culture. Star
Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and The Marvel Cinematic
Universe are just a few to name! These movies help us to feel hope, empowerment, and outside
the movies themselves comes a community of others who connect from them and have a sense
of inclusion by being apart of that.

These movies influence pop culture tremendously. So many people today find
characters within movies they relate or look up to. Often times they’ll dress up like that
character for Halloween or have them as the background on their phone. Movies impact
people constantly and can be an outlet for people to fully immerse themselves and forget
about whatever they’re going through for a little while.

The feelings movies give us and the way we get so engaged is something that is
indescribable. When you’re an adult, sometimes you lose that sense of imagination, but
movies can help us to feel that all over again if only for a brief period in our day. Movies
have the ability to open up our eyes and see something through someone else’s shoes.

Movies help connect us through social interaction. They bring others together whether
that be online groups, costume parties, or showing up to the movies with a bunch of
people in costume on the day a movie premieres.

Movies also can affect how we act. Many people quote popular movie phrases all the
time. They are even referenced in other TV shows, movies, or books. These references
can help bring others closer if they know that they are referring to and if that quote is
relevant to them.

Films are always influencing and will forever be relevant in pop culture.

Module 9 Example: #OscarsSoWhite

PROMPT

This week's video tackled the concept of hegemony and it's totally ok if you're still having a bit of trouble with it.  Here is another video that summarizes the idea really well with a visual metaphor: Cultural Hegemony (2:24 minutes) along with this one: Hegemony: WTF? An Introduction to Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony (6:26 minutes).

With this in mind and the examples that I identified in this week's video on hegemony, your goal is to identify a hegemonic struggle, past or present between the mainstream culture (e.g. the white and pure milk within the video above) and a subculture or counterculture that has found some way to infiltrate but not necessarily changed. For this, it is probably useful to link to an article or blog post (note: this should be news-focused, not information focused), that discusses the issue.  I don't recommend searching merely for your topic AND hegemony--trust me, that won't really work. Instead, look for articles that talk about how a marginal group is trying to impact the dominant culture.  

Within your post, you should include the following:

1. Identify the subculture or counter-culture that you're going to discuss. (1 paragraph)
2. Identify how and why it comes into conflict with the mainstream culture. (1 paragraph)
3. How this conflict has created some but not necessarily significant change and how we can understand the hegemonic forces at play within this scenario.  (1 paragraph)

Be sure to be specific with your example and to use the language and ideas from the video.

Relevant Labels/Tags:  Hegemony, dominant group, subordinate group, [specific arena/topic that you are exploring]

EXAMPLE

I'm going to talk about the #OscarsSoWhite debate that heated up in the announcements of the Oscar nominations for 2016 within this idea of cultural hegemony.  For those unfamiliar with what it was about, here is a basic primer.  Now, since their inception, the Oscars have been almost overwhelmingly white.  On this site, you can see the breakdown of nominations and actual wins, which shows winning is a pretty rare concurrence. Like many areas of popular culture, a white dominant culture has largely controlled the decisions (what movies get made), and prestige (who gets recognition).  This year, after the second year in a row of no African American nominations in the major acting areas, despite there being strong contestants, struck a nerve among the African-American community and other allies.  

The tension gained enough attention to warrant news reports in major publications and news stations of people boycotting the Oscars.  It became clear that the interest in and purity of the Oscars as the leader in the film cultural tastes was being challenged.  So they did react in two particular ways.  The first is that they made commitments to change their selection process, making there was much better representation of diverse identities among the Academy voters (currently, it is 94% white & 77% male).  The second is that they allowed Chris Rock to perform some rather controversial remarks as part of his role as host to the Academy Awards.

Now, many would look at both of these and believe that this was legitimate progress and celebrate it.  After all, the judges are more likely to be more diverse in the future and Chris Rock did at times throw some hard punches at the Academy Awards with regards to the history of racism and even false-categories of films.  Both seem to challenge the status quo, but do they?  In the case of making the pool more diverse, this is often the reaction that dominant institutions take when charged with not being inclusive of minorities.  And while this inclusion is good, it's a hegemonic practice to lessen the threat but not to do anything about it.  

Supreme Course Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said the following about women on the Supreme Court:  “So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. And when I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that."  This is an example of actual change.  By including a few women instead of radically changing the institution, the institution knows that the dominant values will still stay in place and to a certain degree, the injustice will continue, but there is less concern about it since there are representatives involved.  So we have superficial but not necessarily substantive change.  It's an interesting question for the Academy Awards--if they entirely reversed the racial and gender make up (6% white, 23% male) of the voters, would there be significantly different films being selected?  And if so, what does that say about those who are currently voting and why they are voting?

Even with Chris Rock's appearance, he may be critical of the concept, but by still performing and still making people laugh, he alleviates the issue rather than raises it.  He makes people feel slightly uncomfortable with his remarks, but in the next moment is onto the next joke.  Again, he superficially challenges them, but things stay largely the same.  

This is cultural hegemony at work.  The conflicted group (in this case, African Americans and allies), raise up resistance but by this time next year, given the superficial inclusive changes, they are likely to not be as resistant.

The African American Cowboy

A famous aspect of American culture is the myths of the taming of our wild west. Another famous although less fortunate aspect of our culture would be our spoiled past with the slave trade. When combined these two faucets of American culture make for quite the breaking of stereotypes. DJango: Unchained, a film by Quentin Tarantino is a breaker of such stereotypes.

In the mythological American West most cowboys were white men, sometimes you would have an occasional Mexican or Native American, but the majority of the heroes of the wile west had pale skin.

Django turned that all around. As a former slave he becomes a bounty hunter, hunting down white men for the bounties placed on their heads. Instead of him being the one running from the white man, he is the one chasing them down. An ironic scene in the movie is when Django is hunting down a group of brothers who are hiding out on a plantation. Well Django takes the opertunity to show one of the brother just how much the leather whip hurts. He turns the tables on slavery and takes charge.

Django is doubly surprising because he is an African American cowboy. The towns people are all shocked and confused when they see him riding about on top of a horse. At the plantation they visited, the owner even mentioned that it was illegal for a black man to ride a horse. Django didn't care, he was a cowboy and he had earned his freedom. He had just as much a right to be a top a horse as any man.

Spike Lee, the director of Bamboozled, would probably appreciate the originality of Django. He would like how the character strikes back against his oppressors and how he does not get used. Django fights against his suppressors and a society that sees him as a lesser. Django does not give up although the odds are against him, he keeps moving on because he must accomplish his goal and free his wife from the same oppression he so luckily escaped. Django is the image of a strong black man far from the bumbling buffoonery of minstrelsy, Spike Lee would definitely approve with pride.