An analysis of Ien Ang’s interpretation of the ideology of mass culture and its opponents
Ien Ang explores the ideology of mass culture in relation to the social image of American television series “like Dallas” which often receive negative attention due to this ideology. “There are very few programmes that people will freely and plainly admit they like to watch… people seem to feel a compelling need to explain, defend and justify their viewing habits” (Alasuutari, 1992). The film Twilight (Hardwicke 2008) is an excellent example of popular mass culture which can be examined using Ang’s essay on Dallas and the ideology of mass culture as a methodological model to detail the discursive constitution of the social image of this beloved film as Ang does. “By ‘ideology of mass culture’ she means the negative image commonly given to so-called mass culture”; the thought processes which provoke negative associations with some cultural forms, mostly very popular cultural products and practices cast in an American mould, labelling them as ‘bad mass culture’ (Ang, 1998). Although she provides a wealth of insight to this discussion regarding different types of reading positions throughout her analysis, it is important to pay attention to the amount of autonomy she gives to her viewers. She seems to carelessly dismiss the practices of publicity and promotion, focusing too much upon the ideology of mass culture at the expense of other structural and institutional facets that bring the audience to the program and/or film. In Ang’s desperate search for an alternative position to the ready-made conceptions supplied by the structured ideology of mass culture, she tends to ignore significant external factors, and then, she proceeds with a fabrication of an oppositional reading position, which bears no existence among her research. She claims this reading position adopts an independent attitude toward the ideology of mass culture, when really it is yet another strategic defence mechanism, much like the others she explores, which would not exist without this ideology in which it contrasts.