Ideology 4/8

Reading Summary

This chapter discussed ideologies, what they are, and how they are depicted, giving concrete examples of specific ideologies by providing films in which they are prominent. The chapter describes an ideology as a set of values and priorities, and gives examples of political ideologies, the left and right’s different views on environment vs. heredity, relative vs. absolute, secular vs. religious and so on. The chapter also highlights cultural, religious, ethnic, feminist and homosexual ideologies, covering them as individual ideologies, and how they can overlap with each other. In the introduction to the chapter, the reading also describes three levels of ideological explicitness, neutral, implicit, and explicit which have little to no emphasis on ideology, ideology that the viewer must distinguish, and ideology that characters from the film make clear themselves.

Outside Connection

After one of their first meetings in the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon and Robin Williams’ characters meet again and Williams’ character recites a monologue to his patient. He knows that Damon’s character could recite to him information about Michelangelo, he could reference Shakespeare in regards to war, or he could quote sonnets if asked about love, but in reality, he never had truly experienced any of these things.

Reading Connection

I thought of this monologue as a great example of a scene that is implicit, in regards to the degree of ideological explicitness. While Williams’ character never comes out and explicitly says what he believe to be best, his remarks to his patient about never having stood and looked up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or never having woken up next to a woman in bed feeling truly in love, or never having held his best friends head in war as he took his last final breath imply that he believes having a first hand experience is far greater or more important than having just the knowledge related to similar things.