The Dream Machine

My friends and I love to watch movies. Part of our political work together is critiquing the content of mainstream Hollywood films---yes, your Jaws, your Beverly Hills Cops parts one through three, and your Titanics. You see, many leftists watch films and profess a love and respect for the art form, but usually these folks are talking about "sophisticated" cinema, like arthouse features and political/historical documentaries. Going unspoken in this dialogue is a false division between high art and "low-brow" mainstream culture.

But here's the thing---all culture is political, because all culture is produced by human beings in human societies. Any culture that is produced by any person in a society will reflect the given political reality and consciousness of that person's time. In our time, our political reality is white supremacist capitalist societies, the so-called "First World" of Canada, the United States, and other Western countries. As a result, our entire cultural expressions reflect this reality, especially the mainstream entertainment industry. As the phrase demonstrates, this is an industry, a huge arsenal in Western capitalism-imperialism. High art, low art, and the false division between the two are deeply entrenched within the political reality of Western imperialism.

And let's be honest here---most people watch mainstream movies and TV shows. In fact, most folks' perspective of the world around them are heavily shaped by mainstream culture, those relentless data streams that are pumping daily out of plasma screens, speakers, and LCD monitors from coast to coast. Through movies, television, sports, and music, young people learn what is family, what is normalcy, what is sex, and what is love. These programs shape our desires and our dreams---hell, they don't call Hollywood the "dream factory" for nothing. Mainstream media doesn't merely reflect the popular consciousness; it molds it into being. That's the power of ideology for you.