Traditional Interpretation of Images

Traditional Interpretation of Images: Class Stratification in John Berger's Ways of Seeing and Sexual Politics in Susan Bordo's Hunger as Ideology

The proliferation of popular or mass culture following after the emergence of the Industrial Revolution in 19th century gave birth to new ideologies that seek to understand how these new social phenomena (pop culture and industrialization/capitalism) affected the life of human society over the years. One of the most popular theories that developed in light of the Industrial Revolution is the critical theory perspective, which posits that in the society, there will always be an existing conflict between the elite or bourgeois and middle class/working or proletariat classes. Indeed, this stratification in terms of race, class, gender, and even religion has become the focus of modern studies nowadays. John Berger and Susan Bordo, adopting the classical Marxist approach, attempted to analyze how popular culture has affected human society, and what underlying messages can be discerned in the process of 'de-mystifying' the mystification of images that they discuss in the texts Ways of Seeing and Hunger as Ideology.

In Bordo's discourse, the focus of analysis is on images portrayed in commercial advertisements. Ads, as an integral part of capitalism (through consumerism) and popular culture, are also media through which the ideology of the ideal female image as imposed by the society is indirectly illustrated. Bordo studies these messages for any underlying messages (through critical analysis) in commercial ads that help propagate ideologies that stratify the female gender, perhaps the most stratified gender/sex in the society. The author's main thrust in Hunger is to illustrate not only the prevailing ideologies about women, but also the power relations, or 'sexual politics,' that occur between males and society against females.

According to Bordo, images of women in ads are often 'mystified,' in an attempt to conceal the truth about women's stratification in the society. This means that often, what people see in commercial ads are images of women in seemingly 'harmless' roles and actions. However, a deeper understanding of sexual politics and how it is utilized in ads shows how oppression of the female gender occurs at all levels of projected images in the ads. The construction of these images is achieved through utilization of "knowledge of consumers' lives." In this process, producers of these images seek to portray women as they are projected in the society in general, so that meanings in the ad are understood easily by the public. However, images of women portrayed in commercial ads reveal that, "popular media have targeted as characteristic dilemmas of the 'contemporary woman,' who is beset by conflicting role demands and pressures on her time" (143).

Bordo identifies two primary techniques in which the 'mystification' of the women/female image in ads is illustrated: romantic mystification and ideological construction of the female image. In romantically mystifying the female image, images portrayed in ads "trades on our continuing infatuation with... The civility, tradition, and savoir-faire of "Europe"..." (139). This civility and 'savoir-faire' of Europe is the ideology and culture of 'thinness,' idealizing women as physically and 'naturally' thin, despite the fact that women, in reality, are far from the model-like figures that people see in advertisements. Furthermore, these ads also illustrate that not only thinness is the ideal female figure, but beauty is also perceived to be the gauge of an individual's 'worth' to society as a woman. In effect, the romantic image of women as beautiful and thin are the ideals that commercial ads try to evoke through 'mystification' of these ads, images that are far from the 'real' condition of women in real life.

The second technique used is ideological construction of women where roles and statuses of women prevalent in the society are illustrated in commercial ads (161). Through ideological construction, the ideal image of a woman as a caring mother, daughter, and/or wife is perpetuated, which 'domesticates' or relegates the role of women into domestic functions only. This ideal image of a domesticated woman is illustrated in Bordo's discussion of the "metaphorical dualities of work" between males and females, where the former "strive, compete, and exert themselves in the public sphere" while the latter, "cocooned in the domestic arena." In effect, the ideal image of females in the society, as implied in the commercial ads, are based on female thinness, beauty, domesticated roles, and subordinate statuses to males.

In Berger's Ways of Seeing, a critical look at images, particularly paintings (as one of the earliest forms of visual images produced and prevalently used and created by society) is discussed. Just as Bordo utilizes the critical theory perspective in Hunger as Ideology, Berger also utilizes this approach; only, there is focus on a more general category within society, i.e., class stratification. Class stratification as discussed in Berger's discourse centers on the conflict existing between the working and elite class, where the latter dominates and seeks to further the working class' oppression in society. In his analysis of images in society, Berger posits that paintings are one of the visual images used by the elite class to serve as a "status symbol," reiterating the elite class' exclusivity and privileged life from that of the middle/working class.

Image as an art is, according to Berger, relative, since people have different "ways of seeing, perceiving, and appreciating an image" (107). Paintings, in effect, are images of art, and only become an elitist symbol when people belonging to the dominant class put a particular 'label' in it, making it accessible and appreciated only to the ruling class. One way of 'mystifying' these images, that is, concealing the true meaning of these images to the seer, is putting a premium on paintings as part of the past: "They mystify rather than clarify... History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently, fear of the present leads to the mystification of the past" (108). This results to mystification of art, where a "privileged minority is striving to invent history which... justify the role of the ruling class."