COURSEWORK PRIMARY TEXT: Hegemony and Marxism relating to Made in Chelsea

Marxism is based on the writings of Karl Marx, and they were a response to the extremes of poverty and exploitation he witnessed in the years after the British Industrial Revolution.  His most famous book Das Kapital (1867) argued that in a capitalist society the most important and fundamentally antagonist divisions are along class lines and that there are two fundamental classes:

-          The proletariat or workers who have to sell their labour to survive

-          The bourgeoisie who own a range of different types of capital (wealth, factories, shares or property).

There are divisions and frictions between these two classes. Those who follow a Marxist view in a contemporary society would suggest that the bourgeoisie are the middle class who, although they do not own capital, identify and serve the interests of those who do. Marx and Marxists are concerned with how and why the mass population accept a system which is not necessarily right, and is controlled by the minority. Marx suggested that ideology, values and beliefs are important in persuading the proletariat to accept the power of the bourgeoisie.

Marx’s ideas have been applied to modern day media to suggest that the view of the world constructed in most mainstream media contributes to persuading the lower classes to accept that the “upper class” way of life is desirable and what they should strive for. We can strongly relate this to Made In Chelsea, because the stars of the show are social elite from London, and are all very wealthy, living very upper class lives. They are heirs to companies and to a lot of money, and so the audience is transported into this way of life. Those who produce the show have the power to control the way which the audience see the represented lifestyle, and they have the power to persuade the “proletariat” that this is the life which should be strived to achieve. The minority who are in power have the ability to control the thoughts of the majority who are not.

These Marxist ideas which I have previously discussed were expanded by the Italian writers Antonio Gramsci, who in the 1920s and 1930s first introduced the concept of hegemony.  He used this concept to explain how popular culture contributed to the manufacturing of consent for bourgeoisie power within capitalist societies (translated and published in the UK, 1971).  In more basic terms, it can be suggested that repeated media representation of middle-class people in positions of power, control and leadership, such as reading the news or as experts, suggest that class division in society are ‘common sense’ and natural. Made in Chelsea is an example of repeated media representation of the social elite who have positions of power, and it is an example of repeatedly persuading the viewer that it is normal to have this division in society. Marxism focuses on power relationships based on class; however, it should be noted that the concept of hegemony can also be applied to the power relationships found in gender, sexuality and race. Regarding gender, Made in Chelsea is an example of a media text where gender hegemony is portrayed, with the power and dominance relationship between men and woman. As I annotated in the “Signs and Codes” section of my primary text analysis, in many scenes we can see the male in power and the woman as a passive object. This has become normal in our hegemonistic society, where according to the Male Gaze theory, woman are “gazed at” and men do the “gazing”.