Ideology: Essay

Ideology is the values and beliefs of a big proportion of the population, which can be seen as part of the ideological framework of our culture. These specific values and beliefs that shape the way that they perceive the world might not always be in line with the wider values of society. A film also has an ideology that it follows, whether that s good or bad.

Ideology works on two levels; audience ideology, which is what we expect from a film, and the presentation of explicit world views by directors. Structured ideologies refer to the beliefs of groups and how they view the world. For example, Christianity versus Atheism. The media is viewed as another type of ideology, one that encompasses multiple ideologies within it. It acts as a form of communication between people of similar and different beliefs as well as something that can inform one’s cultural ideologies. The role of the media is to not construct ideologies, as that could be dangerous if ‘done wrong’. Instead, the role of the media is to communicate and convey ideologies that are pre-constructed.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is an independent, or ‘indie’, film; meaning that it prioritises art over money and is not backed by a Hollywood studio. The film is set in a place known as the ‘Bathtub’, an island in Louisiana that is sinking due to the ice caps melting. While there are fantasy elements to the story, it is quite heavily based on reality. The sinking state has displaced many people from their homes along the coast, which is shown in the film. The film was inspired by the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in 2005; the director said “I live in New Orleans and was interested in telling a story about people who are staying in South Louisiana and why they’re holding on. I wanted to celebrate that impulse to stand by this place, despite its dangers or flaws.” Producer Michael Gottwald says, “We’re dedicated to making films as a community about communities on the edge of the world. Limitations are motivating forces for us. We love to bust through challenges.”

The film also idealises and romanticises the lives of those living in poverty, along with its quite forgiving portrayal of child abuse, which is mildly problematic. Often Wink tries to encourage Hushpuppy to be strong by calling her a man, Wink says “you gonna be the last man in the bathtub”. He would also get angry at her for crying and also said that weakness and emotions are “just a side effect of being a stupid little girl.” In the film, there is a dam of sorts called the Levee dividing the two areas. This dam acts as a physical barrier between different social groups.

La La Land is the second film by director Damien Chazelle, the first being Whiplash (2014) which was made to get a bigger budget for when he would eventually film La La Land, his dream project. Whiplash was produced with a budget of $3.3 million and gained over $49 million at the box office. This provided Chazelle with the credit and security to be trusted with the much larger $30 million budget for La La Land; which eventually earned $449 million at the box office. La La Land, a lot like Chazelle’s previous film Whiplash, follows the story of struggling artists trying to balance their dream with everyday life. For example, at the end of La La Land, both Mia and Seb achieve their dreams but have lost each other in the process. This is also foreshadowed in the opening musical number, ‘Another Day Of Sun’; in which a romance is abandoned to pursue one’s dream.

One criticism of the film is that there is a lack of people of colour in it. This is quite obscure as jazz is an African-American invention, and there is only one African-American speaking role in the film, Keith, who is corrupting the purity of jazz and selling it out to commercialism. Los Angeles is a very diverse city, featuring large African-American and Latino communities, which is why it is strange that so few roles were given to people of those ethnicities.

This film seems apolitical, mainly escapist entertainment; however, the focus of ‘returning to the past’ and featuring very few people of colour and no members of the LGBTQ+ community does seem problematic. While I feel there was no intention to exclude minorities that have and still are discriminated against when making this film, the inaction to diversify the cast to an inclusive amount is wrong nonetheless.

Another criticism of the film is of how it presents gender. In the film, Mia is presented as quite a passive character, with the plot often being moved along by her male partner Seb. He is the person to tell her to write her own play, he gets her to like jazz and then gets her to go to the audition that starts her career at the end of the film. But, Mia is the most successful of the two characters by the end of the film; however, she did chase after that success because of a man.

Both films do present explicit ideologies, for different reasons and to different effects, whether they were intentional or not.

Spectatorship: A Plan

• Intro
  • Spectatorship is the relationship between the film and the viewer. How the viewer makes sense of the film they are watching.
  • The The Hypodermic Syringe Model: A passive audience, where the idea and meaning of the film is injected into the minds of the viewer, which is accepted uncritically.
  • The Uses and Gratifications Model: An audience of individuals that will react to the film differently, interpret its message and meaning independently. The audience will actively use the film for things like self-identification or entertainment etc…
  • Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory: Stuart Hall theorises that “a film only has meaning when it is decoded by an audience and not all members of the audience will decode the meaning in the same way, especially when the text they are decoding is something as complex as a 2-hour feature film.” Another factor includes their own pre-existing views on certain social issues etc… Each viewer will interpret the film uniquely due to their independence and own personal experience.

• Beasts Of The Southern Wild
  • This film was shot on 16mm filmstock to visually evoke the gritty aesthetic of the Bathtub. Nature documentaries also inspired Zeitlin, as he said that he is “really obsessed with nature documentaries.” and that he “wanted to explore that child-like fascination with nature by showing it up close and in detail.” The visual style of the film was also influenced by the documentary Dry Wood (Blank, 1973), which shows a group of people preparing food together, which is quite similar to a scene in the film. The short film Jerrycan (Julius Avery, 2008) also influenced the film, because of its use of handheld, improvisational feeling camera work, focusing on just presenting the images rather than glorifying and beautifying them.
  • The audience is encouraged to align themselves with the character Hushpuppy, as the camera is often positioned from her perspective. Mostly having the height of the camera at her eye level rather than the adult’s in the scenes.
  • The handheld camera adds a layer of realism to it, make it seem more real to the viewer; as if there were no time to stabilise the camera, they just had to quickly capture the events as they were happening.
  • This handheld look they went for also helped to ground the magical elements of the story more solidly in reality. The shots of the aurochs are handheld like the rest of the film, not locked off creating a falsity around it, it makes it feel real for the spectator. The authentic locations and non-actors also help to ground the film in reality and helps sell the realism of it all to the spectator.

• La La Land
  • They primarily used the Panavision Anamorphic C Series lenses for this film, mainly using the 40mm and the 75mm lenses. In the cases that they wanted to go wider than 40mm, there would be a lot of distortion in the lens; which is both characteristic of anamorphic lenses and the time period of Hollywood they were influenced by. These lenses are absolutely beautiful, the focus roles of in such an exquisite way that the in-focus areas are not absolutely sharp they have a soft glow to them and then they role off into the beautiful blur of the background. This is quite characteristic of vintage lenses, they tend not to be really sharp in the focused areas which I think is really beautiful and suits this film well. When they do use the wider lenses, along with the distortion, quite heavy vignetting can be seen in the corners of the frame. All of this really does create a nostalgic feeling for classical Hollywood for the audience.
  • They primarily used the Panavision Anamorphic C Series lenses for this film, mainly using the 40mm and the 75mm lenses. In the cases that they wanted to go wider than 40mm, there would be a lot of distortion in the lens; which is both characteristic of anamorphic lenses and the time period of Hollywood they were influenced by. These lenses are absolutely beautiful, the focus roles of in such an exquisite way that the in-focus areas are not absolutely sharp they have a soft glow to them and then they role off into the beautiful blur of the background. This is quite characteristic of vintage lenses, they tend not to be really sharp in the focused areas which I think is really beautiful and suits this film well. When they do use the wider lenses, along with the distortion, quite heavy vignetting can be seen in the corners of the frame.

Ideology: A Plan

• Intro
  • Ideology is the values and beliefs of a big proportion of the population, which can be seen as part of the ideological framework of our culture. These specific values and beliefs that shape the way that they perceive the world might not always be in line with the wider values of society.
  • Ideology works on two levels: audience ideology (what we expect from a film) and the presentation of explicit world views by directors.
  • Structured Ideologies: This refers to the beliefs of groups and how that shapes how they view the world. For example, Christianity versus Atheism.
  • Ideology in the Media: The media is viewed as another type of ideology, one that encompasses multiple ideologies within it. It acts a for of communication between people of similar and different beliefs as well as something that can inform one’s cultural ideologies.
  • The Media’s Role: The role of the media is to not construct ideologies, as that could be dangerous if done ‘wrong’. Instead the role of the media is to communicate and convey ideologies that are pre-constructed.

• Beasts Of The Southern Wild
  • Intro: Beasts of the Southern Wild is an independent, or ‘indie’, film; meaning that it prioritises art over money and is not backed by a Hollywood studio. The film is set in a place known as the ‘Bathtub’, an island in Louisiana that is sinking due to the ice caps melting. While there are fantasy elements to the story, it is quite heavily based in reality. The sinking state has displaced many people from their homes along the coast, which is shown in the film. The film was inspired by the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in 2005; the director said “I live in New Orleans and was interested in telling a story about people who are staying in South Louisiana and why they’re holding on. I wanted to celebrate that impulse to stand by this place, in spite of its dangers or flaws.”
  • Producer Michael Gottwald says, “We’re dedicated to making films as a community about communities on the edge of the world. Limitations are motivating forces for us. We love to bust through challenges.”
  • The film also idealises and romanticises the lives of those living in poverty, along with its quite forgiving portrayal of child abuse, which is mildly problematic. In the film, there is a dam of sorts called the Levee dividing the two areas. This dam acts as a physical barrier between different social groups.
  • Often Wink tries to encourage Hushpuppy to be strong by calling her a man, Wink says “you gonna be the last man in the bathtub”. He would also get angry at her for crying and also said that weakness and emotions are “just a side effect of being a stupid little girl.”

• La La Land
  • Intro: La La Land is the second film by director Damien Chazelle, the first being Whiplash (2014) which was made to get a bigger budget for when he would eventually film La La Land, his dream project. Whiplash was produced with a budget of $3.3 million and gained over $49 million at the box office. This provided Chazelle with the credit and security to be trusted with the much larger $30 million budget for La La Land; which eventually earned $449 million at the box office.
  • La La Land, a lot like Chazelle’s previous film Whiplash, follows the story of struggling artists trying to balance their dream with everyday life. For example, at the end of La La Land, both Mia and Seb achieve their dreams but have lost each other in the process. This is also foreshadowed in the opening musical number, ‘Another Day Of Sun’; in which a romance is abandoned to pursue one’s dream.
  • One criticism of the film is that there is a lack of people of colour in it. This is quite obscure as jazz is an African-American invention, and there is only one African-American speaking role in the film, Keith, who is corrupting the purity of jazz and selling out to commercialism. Los Angeles is a very diverse city, featuring large African-American and Latino communities, which is why it is strange that so few roles were given to people of those ethnicities.
  • This film seems apolitical, mainly escapist entertainment; however, the focus of ‘returning to the past’ and featuring very few people of colour and no members of the LGBTQ+ community does seem problematic. While I feel there was no intention to exclude minorities that have and still are discriminated against when making this film, the inaction to diversify the cast to an inclusive amount is wrong nonetheless.

• Conclusion
  • Both films present explicit ideologies, for different reasons and to different effects.

La La Land: Deep Dive

Context

La La Land is the second film by director Damien Chazelle, the first being Whiplash (2014) which was made to get a bigger budget for when he would eventually film La La Land, his dream project. Whiplash was produced with a budget of $3.3 million and gained over $49 million at the box office. This provided Chazelle with the credit and security to be trusted with the much larger $30 million budget for La La Land; which eventually earned $449 million at the box office.

Aesthetics

La La Land was shot on 35mm film stock, specifically the Kodak V3 500T for the darker scenes and the 250D for the lighter scenes. Sandgren Overexposed the film by 1 1/3 stop to gain detail and eliminate grain in the shadows, which is fairly common when shooting on film. They primarily used the Panavision Anamorphic C Series lenses for this film, mainly using the 40mm and the 75mm lenses. In the cases that they wanted to go wider than 40mm, there would be a lot of distortion in the lens; which is both characteristic of anamorphic lenses and the time period of Hollywood they were influenced by. These lenses are absolutely beautiful, the focus roles of in such an exquisite way that the in-focus areas are not absolutely sharp they have a soft glow to them and then they role off into the beautiful blur of the background. This is quite characteristic of vintage lenses, they tend not to be really sharp in the focused areas which I think is really beautiful and suits this film well. When they do use the wider lenses, along with the distortion, quite heavy vignetting can be seen in the corners of the frame. The film was shot in a 2.55:1 aspect ratio, which is quite uncommon for modern films, when shooting widescreen the modern-day standard is usually 2.35:1 and occasionally 2.39:1. However, as they are working in the style of films from the 40s through 60s this was more common. They were so influenced by this stylistic choice that they put the cinemascope logo at the start of the film, often shown in the opening credits of films during that period. Additionally, choosing to shoot most of the dance scenes in one take is very characteristic of classical Hollywood musicals. All of this is used to evoke the style of 30s, 40s and 50s Hollywood filmmaking that the whole film is based around.

Representation

La La Land, a lot like Chazelle’s previous film Whiplash, follows the story of struggling artists trying to balance their dream with everyday life. For example, at the end of La La Land, both Mia and Seb achieve their dreams but have lost each other in the process. This is also foreshadowed in the opening musical number, ‘Another Day Of Sun’; in which a romance is abandoned to pursue one’s dream.

One criticism of the film is that there is a lack of people of colour in it. This is quite obscure as jazz is an African-American invention, and there is only one African-American speaking role in the film, Keith, who is corrupting the purity of jazz and selling out to commercialism. Los Angeles is a very diverse city, featuring large African-American and Latino communities, which is why it is strange that so few roles were given to people of those ethnicities.

Ideology

This film seems apolitical, mainly escapist entertainment; however, the focus of ‘returning to the past’ and featuring very few people of colour and no members of the LGBTQ+ does seem problematic. While I feel there was no intention to exclude minorities that have and still are discriminated against when making this film, the inaction to diversify the cast to an inclusive amount is wrong nonetheless.

Spectatorship

The audience of this film is heavily encouraged to relate and sympathise with the characters and their goals. This can be seen in scenes when the characters speak or sing to great lengths about the goals that they hope to accomplish. 

Beasts Of The Southern Wild: Deep Dive

Context

Beasts of the Southern Wild is an independent, or ‘indie’, film; meaning that it prioritises art over money and is not backed by a Hollywood studio. The film is set in a place known as the ‘Bathtub’, an island in Louisiana that is sinking due to the ice caps melting. While there are fantasy elements to the story, it is quite heavily based in reality. The sinking state has displaced many people from their homes along the coast, which is shown in the film. The film was inspired by the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in 2005; the director said “I live in New Orleans and was interested in telling a story about people who are staying in South Louisiana and why they’re holding on. I wanted to celebrate that impulse to stand by this place, in spite of its dangers or flaws.”

Aesthetics

This film was shot on 16mm filmstock to visually evoke the gritty aesthetic of the Bathtub. Nature documentaries also inspired Zeitlin, as he said that he is “really obsessed with nature documentaries.” and that he “wanted to explore that child-like fascination with nature by showing it up close and in detail.” The visual style of the film was also influenced by the documentary Dry Wood (Blank, 1973), which shows a group of people preparing food together, which is quite similar to a scene in the film. The short film Jerrycan (Julius Avery, 2008) also influenced the film, because of its use of handheld, improvisational feeling camera work, focusing on just presenting the images rather than glorifying and beautifying them.

Representation

In the film, there is a dam of sorts called the Levee dividing the two areas. This dam acts as a physical barrier between different social groups.

Often Wink tries to encourage Hushpuppy to be strong by calling her a man, Wink says “you gonna be the last man in the bathtub”. He would also get angry at her for crying and also said that weakness and emotions are “just a side effect of being a stupid little girl.”

Ideology

Producer Michael Gottwald says, “We’re dedicated to making films as a community about communities on the edge of the world. Limitations are motivating forces for us. We love to bust through challenges.”

The film also idealises and romanticises the lives of those living in poverty, along with its quite forgiving portrayal of child abuse; which is mildly problematic.

Spectatorship

The audience is encouraged to align themselves with the character Hushpuppy, as the camera is often positioned from her perspective. Mostly having the height of the camera at her eye level rather than the adult’s in the scenes.

The handheld camera adds a layer of realism to it, make it seem more real to the viewer; as if there were no time to stabilise the camera, they just had to quickly capture the events as they were happening.

This handheld look they went for also helped to ground the magical elements of the story more solidly in reality. The shots of the aurochs are handheld like the rest of the film, not locked off creating a falsity around it, it makes it feel real for the spectator. The authentic locations and non-actors also help to ground the film in reality and helps sell the realism of it all to the spectator.

La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016)

La La Land is the second film by director Damien Chazelle, the first being Whiplash (2014) which was made to get a bigger budget for when he would eventually film La La Land, his dream project. The brilliant performances paired with the beautiful cinematography and incredible score add up to be one of the best films ever made, in my opinion. The first time I saw La La Land I was blown away; this then spiralled me down into my love of films and has remained one of my favourite films of all time.

The film follows the story of Mia, an aspiring actress living in LA, waiting for her big break. She runs into Seb, a jazz pianist also living in the city, hoping to one day open his own club. After a few curt encounters, they warm up to each other and eventually fall in love. However, their ambitions end up pulling them apart and part ways at the film’s finale.

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Cinematography

La La Land was shot by one of my favourite cinematographers, Linus Sandgren, who also worked on Chazelle’s latest film First Man (2018), which was shot on 16mm film stock and took a more handheld documentary approach. The film won the Oscar for ‘Best Cinematography’ that year. La La Land was shot on 35mm film stock, specifically the Kodak V3 500T for the darker scenes and the 250D for the lighter scenes. Sandgren Overexposed the film by 1 1/3 stop to gain detail and eliminate grain in the shadows, which is fairly common when shooting on film.

They primarily used the Panavision Anamorphic C Series lenses for this film, mainly using the 40mm and the 75mm lenses. In the cases that they wanted to go wider than 40mm, there would be a lot of distortion in the lens; which is both characteristic of anamorphic lenses and the time period of Hollywood they were influenced by. These lenses are absolutely beautiful, the focus roles of in such an exquisite way that the in-focus areas are not absolutely sharp they have a soft glow to them and then they role off into the beautiful blur of the background. This is quite characteristic of vintage lenses, they tend not to be really sharp in the focused areas which I think is really beautiful and suits this film well. When they do use the wider lenses, along with the distortion, quite heavy vignetting can be seen in the corners of the frame (as seen in the shots below). The flaring on these lenses is also really stunning.

The film was shot using the Panavision 4 Perf XL2, meaning that more film would be used than what they had originally planned, as they were originally going to use a 3 perforation camera, meaning less film is needed and they could shoot more. But, as they went with the 4 perf, they needed to rehearse more and shoot less.

The film often used a dual camera set up, mostly when shooting conversation scenes, this makes editing the conversation easier as well as allowing the actors to be more organic as they would not have to repeat every action exactly the same for the reverse shot of the conversation.

The film was shot in a 2.55:1 aspect ratio, which is quite uncommon for modern films, when shooting widescreen the modern-day standard is usually 2.35:1 and occasionally 2.39:1. However, as they are working in the style of films from the 40s through 60s this was more common. They were so influenced by this stylistic choice that they put the cinemascope logo at the start of the film, often shown in the opening credits of films during that period.

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I think the title design of this film was great. From the vintage opening studio cards to the art deco/old Hollywood fonts, all fit the film’s style perfectly. The first thing seen on screen is the recreated ‘Summit’ logo of what it would have looked like in the 40s or 50s, which immediately plunges the viewer into the style of the film. After this, a hand-painted Cinemascope logo is shown, which expands from the previous more square aspect ratio into the cinemascope ratio. The fact that it was hand-painted is reminiscent of old Hollywood titles, as they were all hand-painted during that period. Even the ‘The End’ plate is executed in the classical Hollywood style using a script font. What I thought was really cool was how they even decided to include the film’s copyright underneath the title cards, as they did back during the classical Hollywood period.

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The Score

Justin Hurwitz is a long-time collaborator of Damien Chazelle and has worked on all of his films. He wrote and composed the jazz score for his 2014 film Whiplash, and First Man (2018) known for its retro space style music. The melodies of La La Land were one of the first things created for the film, they were all created when Chazelle first had the idea of La La Land with Hurwitz, many years before either Whiplash or La La Land’s production. The lyrics were written much later, during the production of the film. The score takes on both a jazz style and classical Hollywood score style throughout the film. It won ‘Best Original Score’ at the Academy Awards for that year.

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“I guess I’ll see you in the movies.”

Ryan Gosling – La La Land, 2016

Ideology: An Introduction

Ideology is the values and beliefs of a big proportion of the population, which can be seen as part of the ideological framework of our culture. These specific values and beliefs that shape the way that they perceive the world might not always be in line with the wider values of society.

Structured Ideologies

This refers to the beliefs of groups and how that shapes how they view the world. For example, Christianity versus Atheism.

Ideology in the Media

The media is viewed as another type of ideology, one that encompasses multiple ideologies within it. It acts a for of communication between people of similar and different beliefs as well as something that can inform one’s cultural ideologies.

The Media’s Role

The role of the media is to not construct ideologies, as that could be dangerous if done ‘wrong’. Instead the role of the media is to communicate and convey ideologies that are pre-constructed.

Spectatorship: An Introduction

Spectatorship is the relationship between the film and the viewer. How the viewer makes sense of the film they are watching.

The The Hypodermic Syringe Model

A passive audience, where the idea and meaning of the film is injected into the minds of the viewer, which is accepted uncritically.

The Uses and Gratifications Model

An audience of individuals that will react to the film differently, interpret its message and meaning independently. The audience will actively use the film for things like self-identification or entertainment etc…

Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory

Stuart Hall theorises that “a film only has meaning when it is decoded by an audience and not all members of the audience will decode the meaning in the same way, especially when the text they are decoding is something as complex as a 2-hour feature film.” Another factor includes their own pre-existing views on certain social issues etc… Each viewer will interpret the film uniquely due to their independence and own personal experience.