Essay On Ideological Critique

- The websites for these music festivals demonstrate very interesting and often conflicting ideologies. However, the majority of them employ a kind of classic market liberalism – it is the selling of products (e.g. music) in a market culture that is perceived as inclusive and materialistic. The sentiments espoused in things like the Bonnaroo front page, where people are encouraged to share their experiences about it on social media, creates a kind of collective encouragement and celebration of the musical artists whose products they are buying (through ticket sales or familiarity through purchased records).
Some differences include the cultures they are catering too: places like Coachella and MusicFest cater to more socially liberal crowds in the West Coast, whereas the Willamette Country Music Festival and Jomeokee showcase bands and musical genres typically associated with social conservatives (country, bluegrass, etc.). The front pages of most of these places focus primarily on selling tickets and announcing the lineup for the festival, emphasizing the location of the festival as the place to be for music that weekend. These websites are meant to sell a product, which is indicative of a consumerist/market liberal ideology.
- In the first BP logo, the acronym BP is encased in a shield; this makes the viewer feel as though BP is a protective, nurturing force. To that end, it is a very capitalist perspective to take, as the company is advertising itself as a benevolent entity in your life – you are meant to feel safe and secure, looking at the strength indicated in the logo.
Meanwhile, logo 2 is a more modern, slick and stylish logo; the font is in lowercase, and the symbol is now a flower instead of a shield. This is still a market capitalist ideology, but it is slightly more left wing and friendlier. Instead of acting like a protector, now BP is acting like a friend – it attempts to treat the consumer more like an equal than a cared-for dependent. It’s almost utilitarian in its execution, as the attitude taken is meant to create as little friction as possible.
Logo 3 displays an openly anti-capitalist, nearly social anarchist ideology; BP is shown symbolically pouring gasoline into a US flag-decorated flower pot, killing the plants that are there. The BP logo is large and looming, domineering over the defenseless. The message sent by this is that Big Business and Big Oil are killing the planet and America as a consequence; its stance on materialism is very negative.
- Film poster 1 clearly evokes a Communist or Marxist ideology; the strong red color is meant to evoke Communist iconography, and it shows an innocent civilian being terrorized by masked policemen.
Film poster 2 is much more even-handed and muddled in its message; the policemen have their masks up, showing their human faces, the color palette is much more muted and bright, and the faces are all equalized so that no one person is given greater focus than the other.
Film poster 3 takes the middle ground between the previous two posters’ ideologies; it brings back the red color, and even inserts a roughshod, label-maker font to make it seem more underground and homespun. The actors’ pictures are all in a row, unifying all of them, and the cops are shown at the top as a faded, alien force. It is not as Marxist in its expression as poster 1, but is more pronounced in that message than poster 2.