The seduction of culture: Representation and self-fashioning in Anglo-American popular culture

Abstract

One important means by which a society maintains and reproduces its dominant ideology is through cultural seductions. By creating in its viewers/readers a good feeling about themselves and the world they live in, popular culture entices individuals into approving of, supporting and embracing the dominant social, political and economic orders of our world. What Louis Althusser calls ideological "interpellation," therefore, is frequently a form of seduction involving the use of sweeteners that render certain values, beliefs and social positions enticing and attractive. Among such seducers are money, women (sexual pleasure), fear, an illusion of power and the semblance of dissent/rebelliousness, many of which are, or are generated by the representation of, the cultural and political "others" of the West. At the same time, the reproduction and maintenance of the dominant orders in the West, to which these "others" make no insignificant contributions, ultimately reinforce their subordinate and underprivileged statuses. Driving such illusion-based ideological seductions are capitalism and its colossal culture industry--a symbol of the postmodern convergence of the cultural, ideological and the economic--whose insatiable desire for profit casts the "others" of the West into the vicious circle of mis-representation and domination.