America on Film. Sean Griffin
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and social position will affect the meanings encoded within it. Historically, straight white men in Hollywood made most American films; it has only been in recent decades that women, people of color, and/or homosexuals have had greater opportunities to make films.
Thus, during the encoding stage, the maker(s) of a film place meaning, including ideological meaning, into the text. Sometimes this involves specific, overt editorializing: a character gives a speech about a certain issue, or the entire story attempts to teach a moral lesson. However, the encoding of ideological meaning need not be so obvious; it might be done casually, and even unconsciously. Certain choices in creating mood or emotion, or in fostering audience sympathy (or antipathy), will also carry ideological weight. (Recall our earlier discussion of the hypothetical film about a white man and a Native American man.) To many, the process of encoding may initially sound like it applies solely to the production of propaganda, in which ideas, opinions, or allegations are presented as incontestable facts in order to sway public opinion toward or away from some cause or point. Texts that are labeled propaganda are usually encoded with overt ideological messages – cultural artifacts like advertisements, public service announcements, and political speeches. Hollywood movies are rarely labeled propaganda, yet they always encode certain ideologies. In other words, while all propaganda conveys ideological messages, not all texts are or should be labeled propaganda. In one contemporary example related directly to Hollywood, some male Star Wars fans have objected to the newer films’ emphasis on female characters, arguing that the films have become “too ideological” – meaning too feminist for their tastes. What these fans fail to see – or maybe they do – is that the original films themselves were ideological in the ways that they upheld patriarchal values in the first place.
Students sometimes want to ask about a film text, “Did the author really mean it that way?” Such a question assumes that filmic analysis is “reading too much into things” unless one can find definite evidence of a filmmaker’s intent. The response to this criticism is that all texts encode ideological meanings and messages, but those messages are not always consciously embedded in the text by its producer(s). Usually, filmmakers simply want to make a good film, tell an entertaining story, and sell tickets. Yet what is considered good or entertaining is itself going to differ according to cultural and ideological standards. Furthermore, the makers of cultural texts are not somehow removed from or above the society in which they live. They are just as much shaped by the dominant ideology as anyone else – and this can have an unconscious effect on what they put into their work. A white heterosexual middle‐class Protestant male is going to have had a certain experience of life that will translate in some fashion into the films he writes or directs, even if he is not aware of it. Similarly, a non‐white or female or homosexual filmmaker is going to have had a different life experience that will result in him or her making a different type of film (consciously or unconsciously). Also, a film from the 1980s is recognizably different from a film from the 2010s, not only because of the changes in cars, phones, and fashions, but also because of the changes in the ideological assumptions about social issues (such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability).
A cultural studies model of encoding and decoding.Producers, texts, and spectators all exist within larger spheres of culture and ideology.
The other stage of making meaning, decoding, involves the reception of a text. Once a text is produced, it is distributed to others (to be read, listened to, watched, worn, etc.). Those who use the produced text (that is, the audience) then decode the text’s meanings on the basis of their own conscious and unconscious cultural, ideological positioning(s). In other words, producers, texts, and receivers make up a system of communication or meaning production, and that system exists within the larger social spheres of culture and ideology. Like encoding, decoding can be overt or subliminal. At certain times, an audience member will consciously recognize she or he is being “preached to.” If an ideological position becomes too strong or apparent, people may easily reject it as propaganda (especially if the ideology being espoused challenges their own). Yet, at other times, the messages may be decoded below one’s consciousness. An imbalance that favors men instead of women as the main characters of Hollywood films might be decoded by audiences (without ever stopping to really think about it) as meaning that men are more important (or do more important things) than women.
When producers and readers share aspects of the same culture, texts are more easily decoded or understood. (If you doubt that, try decoding a website written in a language you do not understand!) However, not every reader is going to take (or make) identical meanings from the same text. Depending upon their own cultural positioning, different people may decode texts in different ways – sometimes minutely different, sometimes greatly so. Readings that decode a text in accordance with how it was encoded are said to be dominant (or preferred) readings. On the other side of the spectrum are oppositional readings, which actively question the ideological assumptions encoded in a text. Most readings lie somewhere in between these two extremes. Negotiated readings resist some aspects of what has been encoded, but accept others. Frequently, members of minority groups have social standpoints that differ from those encoded in mainstream texts, and sometimes this allows such individuals to perform readings that are more regularly negotiated or oppositional.
In most cases, Hollywood filmmakers don’t want moviegoers to question the politics of their films. Hollywood promotes its films not as political tracts but as mindless escapism, and an audience member who accepts that tenet will rarely be alert to the cultural and ideological assumptions that the films encode and promote. (One should remember that ideology is often most effective when it goes unnoticed.) The fact that Hollywood films are generally understood as mere entertainment (without political significance) is itself an ideological assumption, one that denies the importance of image studies and therefore represents white patriarchal capitalist film practice as neutral, natural, and inevitable.
Yet the act of performing a negotiated or oppositional reading is not in and of itself a radical denunciation of dominant cinema, or dominant ideology. (After all, even the oppositional spectator has signaled his or her “approval” of the text by purchasing a ticket to the film.) While such readings may criticize and critique certain ideological notions, they are nonetheless created within the same basic hegemonic framework as are dominant readings. They cannot completely negate the ideological messages found in the text, only resist them. Still, oppositional and negotiated readings can have an effect on the hegemonic negotiation of dominant ideologies throughout time. When a certain oppositional reading strategy grows within a culture to the point that future similar texts are no longer accepted by consumers, then certain ideological assumptions must be altered, and future texts may exhibit those changes. As we shall see throughout this book, the overtly racist and sexist images that were found in many films from previous decades are – in many cases – no longer considered acceptable in the twenty‐first century. Nonetheless, white patriarchal capitalism maintains its hegemonic dominance, in both American film and culture‐at‐large.
Case Study: Two Lion Kings (1994 and 2019)
Issues of culture and ideology can be illustrated by examining texts that many people would probably consider totally apolitical and meaningless except as mere entertainment – the Walt Disney Company’s animated feature The Lion King (1994) and its CGI (computer generated imagery) remake (2019). Let our discussion begin with the first film. One of the biggest box office successes in motion picture history, The Lion King embodies what most people refer to as escapist family entertainment. Since the film was about animals – and cartoon animals at that – the film might seem to have little to say about human relations or ideologies. Yet, since cultural artifacts always reflect in some way the conditions of their production and reception, it is not surprising that