Dominant Ideologies in
Advertising
In Marxist philosophy, the term
dominant ideology denotes the
attitudes, beliefs, values, and morals
shared by the majority of the people
in a given society; as a mechanism of
social control, the dominant ideology
frames how the majority of the
population thinks about the nature of
society, their place in society, and
their connection to a social class.
Advertising:
the activity or profession of producing
advertisements for commercial
products or services."her father was
in advertising"
advertisements collectively."despite
being instructed to take the signs
down, he says he has no intention of
removing the advertising"
Print Adverts
that reinforce or
challenge
dominant
ideologies
The dominant ideology showcased here is that of Women being inferior to
Men. The poster on the left represents the woman as a sexual object as she
has clearly been positioned in a way that exposes her cleavage. Also, the
Man is standing over her which could symbolise that he rules over her. She is
both literally and figuratively trapped by the man as she is laying between
his legs and might be forced to drink with and have sex with him. The other
print advert however portrays women in a more positive way. It still has a
hegemonic ideology though. The female character is wearing an apron which
suggests that she stays at home and does domestic chores such as cooking,
cleaning and washing but the phrasing of victory job, the flag in the
background and the clenching of the persons fist show that she is becoming
more powerful. This advert is of the same dominant ideology but from a
Movies that
reinforce
dominant
ideologies
 A movie genre that typically
includes dominant ideologies is
the horror slasher genre. The
Scream series is a common
example when reinforcing this
idea. There are often victims that
are coincidently young girls. The
murder or monster is normally a
big intimidating male. This
represents that Men are
dominant, stronger and have
control of situations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch? The dominant ideology in Team
v=U1mlCPMYtPk America is that Americans are
the best race. The song and the
car driving is seen as cool by
younger audiences to the
American characters seem
awesome. The Muslims are
portrayed as hostile old
terrorists when that it not the
case at all in real life. This film
represented people in the way
that it did for a comedy effect
Game that
show dominant
ideologies
 In this dominant ideology,
Black people are shown as
https://www.youtube.com/watch? thieves and criminals. In this
v=S4hFxwS-PQ8 video, a black computer
controlled artificial intelligence
steals a fire engine when no
white ones do. This character
can not be controlled by
players or influenced in any
way to steal the vehicle so this
was programmed in by the
game creators. This perhaps
shows that the makers of
Grand Theft Auto V think that
black people are criminals.
Also, the black characters
notably swear a lot and use
derogatory terms such as
In Farcry 4, the dominant
ideology is that eastern
countries are ruled by
dictators and have a strong
military influence. The
majority of citizens are poor
so turn to committing crimes
Political
Dominant
Ideologies
 In The Walking Dead and its spin off prequel show
Fear the Walking, there are characters who are
white, black, Asian, Hispanic, male, female,
heterosexual, homosexual, religious and atheist as
well as many other kinds of human beings. This is
a visual representation of liberal America and it
reinforces the agenda that globalisation and
multiculturalism is a positive thing. The dominant
ideology is that having a society involving many
In Skyrim, there are twokinds
different sidesofofpeople
a civil is a good thing.
war that the player can chose to join
and fight for. The imperials are similar
to liberalists whereas the Stormcloaks
are very much nationalists. At the
beginning of the game, the main
character is imprisoned by the imperials
and almost killed which influences most
players to side against them. This could
Dominant
Ideology
In A Song
In the song Macarena, there are
people who are white, Asian and
Hispanic. They are all
represented as happy as they
are all enjoying dancing
together. This reinforces the
dominant ideology that
liberalism, globalisation and
multiculturalism are all positive
things. There is nothing major
that indicates that there is a
problem with all these different
kinds of people all interacting
together. People watching
without thinking about
representations would probably
not even notice the the different
kinds of people in the video,
thus subliminally accepting that
socialism is good.