Hegemony: A Subliminal Attack

In decoding the media and how it functions there are many extensive concepts to understand. Not only do you need to understand them, but also see how they are used and how they affect the subject. Some would say the main, and most trivial, concept of our deceiving source of news and entertainment is hegemony. Hegemony is something we come into contact with daily, hourly, and practically every second of our lives. In order to help you understand, and share my recent understanding of what this oh so powerful word means, we will look at definitions and examples of how it creeps into your mind and thoughts altering many of your infinitesimal and life changing decisions.
Hegemony takes a specific idea and through the media makes it appear as something that you, the consumer, would depict as common sense. Therefore, the idea they are exploiting seems as if it were second nature to you and a reassurance of what you already know. Why is this bad you ask? IT’S A SUBLIMINAL ATTACK! I don’t know about you but I am most certainly not thrilled to know messages are being sent into my mind through my subconscious. This idea of hegemony makes you question, what is part of the natural world or the social world? If something appears to you as common sense you would think it was a natural concept and it may never occur to you that someone somewhere may have made it all up.
A perfect example of this concept comes from a passage in James Lull’s “Hegemony.” He expresses that the media has circulated the idea, through hegemony, of a homeless person turning a shopping cart into a means for self, movable storage. This is not a common concept but through social, media, and interpretive tendencies it becomes a societal norm and stereotypes every homeless person with this quality. This example struck my attention out of majority of others because especially living in the area we do, this is something seen almost daily in an urban, city environment.
Hegemony is something most people don’t realize is happening when it is at its strongest. I bet you never would have thought of the homeless man and his shopping cart as something the media interpreted into common sense. We must think critically about the messages behind the media and the ideas they are interpreting, in or out of proportion, to their advantage into the minds of our society.