Hegemonic Influences

Throughout our lives, there are many influences that affect our lives either directly or subtly. One of the biggest factors for these influences that often gets overlooked is the advertising and its ability to shape and fortify the ideas that are known as the “codes of gender” which reinforce the systematic procedure that an individual should follow based on the gender identity they were prescribed at birth or how society sees them. And how what I once thought was just something that was such a minor inconvenience when watching my shows or listening to music how it has such a contribution towards our “sociological imagination” (Mills 1969) and how with the influence of advertisement contributes to the hegemonic views of our social norms.
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Such as what I will wear to certain events or just when I go outside versus what I would wear around the house. Also, I see how it effects my decisions for things such as what I want to do as I’m older or what makes a family normal versus what I recognize as what a family is made up of. Often in an advertisement, the males are represented in these important commanding jobs that not only pay well but have everyone looking at them as a hero such as police officers, firefighters or doctors. Looking back at it know I can see how these advertisements had me on the track of these types of careers, asking man young boys what they want to be you will get a lot of these generic answers of being one of these “top 5 male jobs” that society has deemed to be at the top of masculine jobs. As stated in the reading with Ravelli and Webber they use “subtle yet insidious ideological control and manipulation” (pg 68) this subtleness not only creates tension against those who want to lead towards their personal goals it keeps us in these strata’s that if they try to move out of they are immediately judged for those actions. These gender codes in advertising also reach further than just
As shown within the film Jhally revisited Goffman’s theory of Gender displays which is used to reinforce such notations that women are fragile or they are less than man. With the perspective that sociology has now given me, I can see how even today there is still mass advertisement oppression that is subtle enough those who are not aware would never realize they are being programmed to normalize this images or thoughts. Along with that, the sociological perspective has also allowed me to understand that these subtle oppressions reach further then just gender identity, it showed how there is another sub-division for class and race and how the power of illusion takes place in such ways that it is overlooked until it gets pointed out. An example of this are the ban commercials that did these subtle leaks but got caught and pressured into either removing the ad or facing some other disciplinary actions such as the international clip we were shown in class in which the black man was put into the washer with the new pod packet and came out “clean” as an attractive, fit, light skin man showing off the “white is best” older mentality that has been in some ways declining, but not yet