readings, but rather different interpretive strategies. There is no single definitive reading of any text. If a reader decodes a certain understanding of The Lion King, and can point to specific examples from the film to support his or her reading, then that reading is valid. And in order to make a persuasive defense of one’s reading of a film (instead of just saying “I liked it – I don’t know why”), one needs to work at finding supporting textual evidence – the specific ways the text uses film form to encode meaning. (Note how the oppositional reading just presented pointed out story elements, the actors involved, how the characters were drawn, the use of music, and even aspects of editing.) This process of analysis need not destroy one’s pleasure in the text. Learning to analyze film form and ideology can enrich and deepen one’s experience of any given text, and one can become a more literate, and aware, media consumer.
Pop music superstar Beyoncé starred as the voice of Nala in Disney’s CGI remake of The Lion King (2019), part of a deliberate effort to include more black talent in the cast. Photo: Tinseltown/Shutterstock.
The second Lion King film, released twenty‐five years later reveals interesting things about its era, just as the first film did; for example, its ecological message seems even stronger in the current era of climate change awareness. The new Lion King also demonstrates the active hegemonic negotiation of some of the first film’s ideological messages. It tries to address some of the criticisms of the first film vis‐à‐vis race by hiring far more African American actors and singers to voice the lead roles (including Donald Glover and Beyoncé). The familiar score is still by Elton John and Tim Rice, but Disney brought in Pharrell Williams to produce some of it. The female characters do more in this remake. Beyoncé’s Nala has a new song all to herself. Simba’s mother Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) chases away hyenas (off screen) near the start of the film, and she and the female members of the pride fight ferociously to drive off the hyenas at the end. The leader of the hyenas (Shenzi) in the new version is also a much stronger female character. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the new film is the way its photo‐realistic CGI animation (what some people mistakenly refer to as “live action”) tones down the stereotypes present in the first version. Scar (Chiweitel Ejiofor) no longer has swishy gay connotations; in fact, he wants to marry Simba’s mother. There is no longer a suggestion of a Nazi rally in his big number, “Be Prepared.” Similarly, other characters who also had vaguely stereotypical behaviors in the first film, are herein treated with more reverence (Rafiki) and menace (the hyenas). Still, even with these “corrections” to characters some audiences and critics found stereotypical, the new film maintains the hegemony of patriarchal rule, by retelling the central story of a father passing his power down to his son. This is often what happens with remakes in Hollywood; instead of telling new stories (as Disney did in films like Frozen [2013] and Moana [2016]), remakes frequently make concessions to some aspects of diversity even as they also retain central ideological messages from the original film, an excellent example of hegemonic negotiation.
This book hopes to provide its readers with the tools and encouragement to become active decoders – to help students develop the skills needed to examine media texts for their social, cultural, and ideological assumptions. Throughout this book, specific films will be decoded from divergent spectator positions, pointing out how the context of social and cultural history can and does influence different reading protocols. Furthermore, one will see that judging textual images as merely “positive” or “negative” vastly oversimplifies the many complex ways that cultural texts can be and are understood in relation to the “real world.” This textbook itself is part of American culture, and thus meshes in its own way with the dominant and resistant ideologies within which it was forged. Its ultimate aim is not to raise its readers somehow out of ideology (an impossible task), but to make its readers aware of the ideological assumptions that constantly circulate through American culture, and especially through its films.
Questions for Discussion
1 What labels do you apply to your own identity? What labels do other people apply to you? Ultimately, who has the right to name or label you?
2 Can you think of other cultural artifacts (like rap music or tattoos) that have been developed in a specific subculture and then incorporated into dominant culture? How was the artifact changed when it went mainstream?
3 What is your own ideological positioning? What are some of the ideologies you may have internalized? Do any of them clash with your own self‐identity?
Further Reading
1 Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971.
2 Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, Third Edition. London: Sage Publications, Inc., 2008 (2000).
3 Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw Hill, 2001.
4 Collins, Patricia Hill and Sirma Bilge. Intersectionality. Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2016.
5 Dyer, Richard. The Matter of Images, Second Edition. New York and London: Routledge, 2002 [1993].
6 Gray, Ann and Jim McGuigan. Studying Culture: An Introductory Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
7 Hall, Stuart, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, eds. Culture, Media, Language. London: Unwin Hyman, 1980.
8 Hancock, Ange‐Marie. Intersectionality: An Intellectual History. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
9 Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979.
10 Morley, David and Kuan‐Hsing Chen, eds. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1996.
11 Turner, Graeme. British Cultural Studies: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1996.
12 Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
13 Williams, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: NLB, 1980.
Chapter 2 THE STRUCTURE AND HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD FILMMAKING
This chapter examines what Hollywood film is and how it developed. Hollywood film can be identified by a specific set of formal and stylistic structures as well as by a set of historical, industrial, and economic determinants. These underlying structures affect how Hollywood films represent America, and how they conceive of issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Because Hollywood film is so prevalent in American culture (and world culture), many people think that the way Hollywood makes movies is the only way to do so – that there are no other possible methods for making films. However, there are many types of movies and many different ways to make them. As we shall see throughout this book, these other, non‐Hollywood movies often present different representations of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability than do Hollywood films, partly due to the (comparatively) greater opportunities for women, people of color, homosexuals, and differently abled individuals that exist outside the Hollywood system. Both Hollywood and non‐Hollywood films have evolved since the beginning of the twentieth century, in conjunction with the broader social, political, and cultural events of American history. This chapter broadly addresses those concerns, and will lay the basis for future chapters’ more detailed analyses of how these issues
