A lecture used to support student learning (MA) based on ideology with specific reference to the Motor Cycle Diaries.

1. Educating the International Leaders
of Tomorrow (2009)
Ideology
Making a Difference (2012)
Text of study: Diarios de Motocicleta (d. Walter Salles
2003)

2. 1992-5 1997-2001 2001-4
BA: Film & Literature VSO Nepal
Richard Dyer
‘A’ Level Media Studies
Ginette Vincendeau
GCSE Media Studies
Jose Arroyo
2004-12
Victor Perkins
1996/7 Media Advocacy
PGCE: English, Media & Drama ‘A’ Level Media Studies Didibahini
GCSE Media Studies
On the Road (2003)
IB Film Studies
BTEC Creative Media Production Anna Winston Pt.1 (2012)
ESF Film Awards 2009 & 2010
HKSFA 2011

3. Defining Ideology
Comes from the ideologues of
the French Enlightenment
How has the term changed its cultural value
over time? What does it connote and how
does it circulate as ‘discourse.’ (Foucault)

4. Terry Eagleton
Ideology as text
• Production of meaning, signs and values
• Ideas associated with class or group
• Ideas legitimating dominant political power
• False ideas legitimating political power
• Systematically distorted communication
• Conjuncture of discourse and power

5. Terry Eagleton
Negative Linguistic Connotations...
• ‘On several of these definitions,
nobody would claim that their
own thinking is ideological, just as
nobody would habitually refer to
themselves as ‘fatso.’ Ideology, like
halitosis, is in this sense what the
other person has.’
• Usually a suggestion that ideology
is to peak schematically,
stereotypically and perhaps with
the faintest hint of fanaticism.

6. Lacan’s Mirror
MGM- ‘The Dream Factory’
Heightened sense of reality
The cinematic apparatus/medium
as illusory, aspirational...serving the
DOMINANT IDEOLOGY

7. Chapters:
1. Catalyst- Idealistic Aims
2. Class Juxtaposition- Professions with connotations
3. The Ranch vs The Farm
4. Transcending Boundaries- Anderson, Gellner
5. Road Movie Rule Book- Don’t stop!
6. Solidarity
7. Historical Revisionism
8. River as Allegory
9. The Status Quo
10. The Divided Continent- Challenging the Dominant Ideology
11. Crossing the River- Unification
12. Journey’s End- Montage- Representation of the un-represented

8. 4. Transcending Boundaries- Anderson & Gellner (Modernist view on
Nationalism)
How are nation states
represented? We will never meet most of the people in our state.
‘Nationalism is not the
awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents
nations where they do not exist.’ (Ernest Gellner)

9. ‘Finally it is imagined as a
community, because
regardless of the actual
inequality and exploitation
that may prevail in each, the
nation is always conceived as a
deep, horizontal comradeship.
Ultimately
it is this fraternity that makes
it possible
over the past two centuries,
for so many millions of
people, not so much to kill, as
willingly die for such limited
imaginings.’ (Anderson, 1983)

10. Baudry- The Apparatus/Text Hall/Morley (78)
Audience Reception/Placement
Preferred
(Dominant Ideology)
Negotiated
7. Historical Revisionism
Oppositional
Does the notion of
Emotional Intelligence (Goleman)???
oppositional readings
challenge
‘interpellation’ (Althusser)
and the idea that we have
no choice in identifying with
dominant ideological
constructions?
Self Science

11. Hedonism Idealism
to to
Idealism Political
Radical/Realist
Legitimates force...Ironic as
Marxist readings of crime genre do the same
Transformation
‘A revolution without guns.’
It would never work.’

12. The Church as Metaphor
for oppression and the
ruling class... ‘I don’t see
any rulebook.’
Ideological State Apparatus (Althusser)
10. The Divided Continent- Challenging the Dominant Ideology
The stolen food
as ideological construct?
Preferred Reading?

13. ‘...that the division of America
into unstable and illusory nations
is a complete fiction.’
11. Crossing the River- Unification
The sign & signifier (Saussere)
‘Primitive Narcissism’ -Baudry- (Our identification with the journey)

14. Black & White- Realism
Compositional Variety- Rule of thirds
single subject, group subject etc
12. Journey’s End- Montage- Representation of the un-represented
Direct Mode of Address-
Alienation Effect (Brecht)
Self-reflexive convention
which reminds the viewer of
film apparatus...therefore...
a symbol of shared humanity
and egalitarianism.

15. Ideological Effects on the Cinematographic Apparatus
by Jean-Louis Baudry
‘...the subject, is put forth, liberated (in the sense that a chemical reaction liberates a substance) by the
operation which transforms successive, discreet images (as isolated images they have, strictly speaking,
no meaning, or at least no unity of meaning) into continuity, movement, meaning.’
Liberation via continuity acts as a vehicle (no pun intended) for an ideological
preferred reading of the text.

16. iwilliamson@mail.sis.edu.hk
nepaliain@gmail.com
Twitter- @iwilliamson
www.esfmedia.com
www.esfmediaforum.com