Everything is shaped by ideology: It is what makes the mass of experience discernible. Movies show us how ideology works while also doing the work of ideology. Popular culture (read: big-name actors) works to inspire copycats-- individuals who reinforce a systematic set of ideas and processes within society. Let's consider James Cameron's 1999 blockbuster film,Titanic. He chooses to tell the tale of the beloved ship's demise through the lens of a love story.
The most important scene in the film is the crash because of what the imagery symbolizes. Before deconstructing the imagery in that scene, it just seems like two lovers from different social classes sharing a night of passion aboard a ship that hits an uncharted iceberg. Now,analyzing the present cinema ideology, we begin to question: Why is this not a film about two lovers from the same social class? Could this story just have well been told about some other couple?
This “class-mixing” is important because historically, U.S. immigration strictly regulated Third class from interacting with other travelers-- this love affair would have been nearly impossible on the Titanic. Jack was legally defined as Third Class and visually controlled in society by being relegated away from the other travelers. So, why would Cameron choose these two travelers from different worlds? It is because the crash advances ideologies on class without us even being aware.
To further explain, consider the time of the crash in the love affair-- it was when this “odd-couple” decided they would go against social mores and be together-- for love. They were atop the ship, soaring together, showing their love to the world, and not just sneaking around the lower decks where people wouldn't look at them with disgust and wonderment.
When they were at their highest together they ran into an iceberg that destroyed their lives-- and this material iceberg represents the ideological “icebergs” of race, class and gender here in the U.S. The crushing, and sometimes deadly, social prejudices against “class-mixing” are focused in the iceberg that came seemingly out of nowhere, and Jack, our lower-class hero; embodies the rebellion against capitalism. Rose's inability to save Jack drives home the ideology of the system being tolerant of rebels, just as long as their path is set and their fate is clear. In the water after the crash, Rose is further confronted by “real life”-- a life that doesn't permit attachment to Jack-- she was forced to let go of Jack and accept her life of privilege. When you strip it down to the essentials, she traded Jack for that gigantic diamond. Poor Jack: His fate was sealed with his foolish desire to climb sneakily upward into a richer family and better class. Sadly, when considering these ideologies, it is evident how Cameron's Titanic fixed Jack on a path of poverty he was never to escape-- true love could not even save Jack from his impoverished beginnings and current plight.
In closing, my question here is:
Is any of this "whipping back of the curtain" on these ideologies effecting some change in our own "real lives"?
