Ideology Essay

Introduction
Ideology created by the tradition and culture now has strong power in the society and potentially affects citizens’ mind in the everyday life. Culture and traditions to some extant are regarded as the truth, regulation and standard after the long period of social practice and develop the ideology hegemony in the disciplinary institutions such as family, school and even the whole society. Simultaneously, once people born into the world they are never stop finding the answer of “who am I”, and ideology actually participates in the whole process. Stuart Hell (1996) mentioned that the identity is reproduced based on distinguishing self from others in the social group in which members share same history and characteristics. The gender

In a traditional Chinese family different generations are living together and the sensibility of age and gender is yet conventional. In this photo, the oldest generation sat in front; the second generation stood behind while the youngest were in the middle or beside. Although there is no domestic rank anymore, the structure of traditional household’s order and gender presentation still exist. It is expressed that the youngest posterity is protected and they are links between other two generations; the second generation is the support of this family, and the oldest generation is respected and well considered. “A harmonious, traditional and ordered family” is the main ideology in this picture. Ideology is a kind of ‘common-sense knowledge’ which is believed by every member in a social group and it strongly connect with the culture which produces the interpellation (Althusser, 1998). What is everyone’s position, how to behave yourself and how to treat others in a normal way are the information that this ideology wants to

Compared with the conventional society, in the photo the gender identity is not so palpable, such as the haircut and the color of clothes---not all women had long hair and the clothes of men were also colorful. However, face expression, for instance, expose the gender roles and relationships in this family. Basically, women showed their beauty, innocence and soft while men were showing their gentleness, independence and their important positions in the family. The reason of this is because of the requirement of supporting the normal social order. In Butler’s theory ( cited in Felluga, 2001), ideology create compelling illusion of sexuality which lead men and women to perform the gender in certain ways. This process of “performativity” is the result of the disciplinary power and repeating stylization of the body (Butler, 1990). Children grow up and learn the gender performance in a direct instruction from adults such as boys are given toy cars rather than bobbies, while they also implied in a potential way such as the influence of this photo: it already records the traditional gender relationship and the conventional standard of gender