A2 Media Studies

The Media and Collective Identity

(03) The Media and the family

There are two men in my life. To one I am a mother, to the other Im a wife, And I give them both the best, With natural Shredded Wheat
1970s advertising jingle

In this unit we will explore how the media represents one element of our collective identity. An element of everyones identity is their belonging (or sometimes non-belonging) to a family of some sort. We will look at past and contemporary media representations of the family and explore why this is important. We will look at how media representations of family relate to our sense of our own identity as a member of a family. We will also look at why the concept of family is such an important one for politicians, who are always going on about family. We will see that familialism, the ideology of the ideal family, is a powerful political force, and we will see that some media texts and genres back up the ideology of familialism and some interrogate or undermine it. We will also see that you cannot understand representations of the family and their relationship to society and identity without also considering other elements of collective identity and other ideological positions. The quote above shows that gender is vital to consider. But so is youth, sexuality and other factors, all of which contribute to our identities. What is identity? Personal identity refers to an individuals sense of her/himself as a discrete, separate entity from others. In Western capitalist societies, great emphasis is placed on the idea of personal identity through the ideology of individualism, which creates the assumption that the individual is the basic unit of society and that individual consumers can express their identity through their cultural and lifestyle (and purchase) choices. What is collective identity? Collective identity refers to an individuals sense of belonging to a group (the collective). From the perspective of the individual, the collective identity forms a part of his or her personal identity. Sometimes, the sense of belonging to a particular group will be so strong that it will trump other aspects of the person's personal identity (for example, the person may invest most of their sense of self-worth into their membership of the group and see other elements of their identity as much less important, or in some cases may be willing to assume great risks for the group, even as great as loss of life). (Definition from Wikipedia). Some organisations/institutions in society create such powerful senses of collective identity as a way of maintaining cohesion and controlling individuals. The politics of identity Who we are or who we want to be can be seen as political for a number of reasons. Firstly one aspect of our personality is about our beliefs for example do we think that men and women are equal? Do we think that gay marriage is OK? These elements of our identity our beliefs and attitudes sum up whether or not we are broadly conservative or broadly liberal/progressive. Some of us may hold beliefs that are very different from these two main strands in society we may be revolutionary in our beliefs. Secondly, and following on from this point, identity is political because political parties try to represent or stand for the values and ideals of particular collectives. So for example at the moment there is a struggle over which party represents the true interests of families in the UK. Thirdly, some advanced theorists have argued that identity itself, or the values and attitudes held by collective groups of people, are actually in large part created by society in order to keep people in their place in society. The ideas of Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci in particular are important here.