Polysemy or Interpellation

Introduction

Interpellation is the constitutive process where individuals accept and reply to ideologies, thereby recognizing themselves as subjects. The research of this paper foregrounds several important issues in the study of Media. Mass media have appeared as a social institution, presuming numerous of the purposes previously assisted by customary social institutions for example the place of adoration, school, government, and family. However, in Western countries functioning on the private-ownership form (most especially the United States), media systems were not ever proposed to assist as a social institution. Instead, the prime target of a personally belongs to media organization is to make a profit for the company. Thus, numerous movies, TV programs, and Web sites comprise sexy and brutal content conceived to appeal the largest imaginable audience. The messages comprised in these programs can be bewildering or disruptive to a public looking to the media for main heading, reason, and meaning. The public's reliance on the Western media for guidance and support can thus be dangerous. Within this context, media literacy presents strategies that endow persons to critically analyze media messages and put media programming into significant perspective. This study compare and contrast the Fiske's and Althusser's analyzes specific media example (Bertran, 110).

Discussion and Analysis

Althusser's Argument

The French philosopher, Louis Althusser, first popularized the phrase in his seminal term paper “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes in the direction of an Investigation)” (Althusser, 1972). In the term paper, Althusser explores the relationship between the state, modes of (re)producing power and ideology from a Marxist viewpoint, characterising ideology as “the invented relationship of individuals to their genuine situation of existence” (Althusser 1972: 162). In his delineation, Althusser sees ideology functioning as a mediator between systems of power and individuals. It permits for hegemonic power to duplicate itself by obscuring customary types of repression and integrating individuals into the power structure (Bertran, 110).

Althusser complicates the relationship between domination and subjugation by inserting the interpellation process, where individuals identify themselves as topics through ideology, therefore showing how topics can be complicit in their own domination. He devotes the example of a policeman agent yelling out “Hey, you there!” in public. Upon hearing this exclamation, an individual turns round, and “by this meagre one-hundred-and-eighty-degree personal alteration, he becomes a subject” (Althusser, 1972: 174). In the proceed of accepting that it is really he who is addressed, the individual therefore identifies his subjecthood. It is significant to note that this subjecthood is double: whereas he is identified as a social subject by the regulation, he is furthermore subjugated to the law. Althusser emphasizes the ubiquity of ideology and interpellation by noting how topics are consistently constituted by Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) for example the family, informative organisations, and media for example publications, wireless and television. The concept that an individual can be interpellated through diverse mediums would subsequent be appropriated by theorists from varied backgrounds such as movies and media investigations and heritage studies (Bertran, 110).

Although he primarily presents a temporal example of interpellation, Althusser asserts that ...