The American Dream of Inequality

As I was reading the chapter “Deviants and the Consensus” in Stuart Hall’s “The rediscovery of ‘ideology’: return of the repressed in media studies,” I realized that many of the things he talks about directly connects to the American Dream. Though the American Dream was not mentioned in this chapter I would argue that The American Dream would be the perfect example of what he talks about. One of the first things I did when I had this realization was looking up the exact definition for the American Dream. None of the sources have an exact definition of the American Dream; most even claim that the American dream probably has a different meaning to every US citizen. So for the sake of my argument I am going to assume that the American Dream is “the dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement,” which I believe is a fair representation (Truslow Adams).

Based on Hall’s argument, I would claim that the American Dream is a result of a “complex process of social construction and legitimation” to benefit the wealthy and the powerful who “had much to gain from the continuous production of popular consent to its structure, to the values which supported and underwrote it, and to its continuity of existence” (Hall 63). Though exists in the democratic society, the American Dream is fundamentally an ideology that actually defend a system of inequality. The idea behind the dream is that the hard working will succeed and get ahead while the lazy will fall behind. Though this idea is perfectly logical and rational, this does not take into account, inheritance, connections, luck, and discrimination. There are countless of examples out there to show that, it does not take hard work to be better and richer.

This idea of meritocracy is therefore a myth created to disguise inequality and to create the illusion of fairness. Throughout history, we witnessed that it is never enough for some to simply have more than others. Therefore, for a system of inequality to exist, those who have more must persuade those who have less that the allocation of who gets what is just, “natural and unchangeable” (Hall 65). Those who have less must “accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they value it as divinely ordained or beneficial” (Hall 65). Another reason that it is so hard for people to see this illusion is because the illusion is rested on the ideology which cannot be proven true or false. One cannot simply conduct an experiment testing whether hard working will make life “better and richer and fuller for every man.” Similar to many aspect of religion, divine right of kings and reincarnation, the idea of American Dream cannot be falsify.

Regardless of what other may think or believe, I do not believe in the American Dream and the idea that you can go as far as the ability can take you. I believe different people face different obstacles and complications and it is not fair to say that everyone has equal opportunity or even any opportunity at all, to achieve greater material prosperity. To a large extent, I believe American Dream to be a modern propaganda that aim not to “modify ideas, but to provoke action” (Ellul 16). This action I am talking about is the act of accepting the idea and to act on it as if it is true. The American Dream is fits perfectly with the ideal characteristic of propaganda claim by Ellul: “It must operate on the individual at the level of the unconscious and… is an activating image: a sort of vision of desirable objectives that have lost their material, practical character and have become strongly colored, overwhelming, all encompassing and which displace from the conscious all that is not related to it” (Ellul 18). And as it is natural for people to attend to and retain information that confirms their beliefs and ideology but to ignore information that contradicts expectation, they immerse themselves in this myth and illusion also known as The American Dream.

All Historians are Journalists

Throughout this semester, I have been overwhelmed by what I learn in Media Studies class. However, most of the books I have read in this class concentrated on television. McKibben, Gitlin, McChesney and Bourdieu all put emphasis on television and how they alter our perceptions. Though this is the case, I started wondering about what other medium has a large or possibly larger impact on our perception of the world. The Print Media presentation on November 13th 2008 made me realized that although little emphasis has been put in print media, it still is a predominant source of today’s education. Take this Media Studies class for instance; all students are assigned 5 books to read throughout the semester. It is quite clear that although many statistics and researches proved to show how print media receives less and less attention year after year, print media is still the fundamental source of the school educational system.

Print media, similar to other types of media, get updated as time passes by. The books we are reading today will definitely be different from those that our parent read or our grandparents read. This is mainly due to new discoveries, innovations or even evidences that rejected traditional views. However, one of the books that also get updated is history books. This really bothers me because no matter how much I try to make sense of it, I cannot understand what makes one part of history more important than another. What gets written on history books, what get excluded and more importantly, can the past really be known?

Google dictionary define history as “the aggregate of past event,” but I disagree. I would rather define history as “the biased perception of the past through the point of view of journalists in the present.” Some people might call these journalists historians, but I cannot really see the different. I believe that historian is just journalist that writes about history. And as McChesney would argue, “decision making is an inescapable part of the journalism process, and some values have to be promoted when deciding why one story rates front-page treatment while another is ignored” (68). Comparable to journalist, decision making is also an inescapable part of historian. Perhaps one could even argue that historian makes a larger decision of deciding why one event gets to go in the book while another is ignored. Basically what I am asking is what makes Hitler’s life and history more important than mine?

One of the relatively recent events that cause controversy is when China decided to rewrite its history books. “Socialism has been reduced to a single chapter” while “Mao Zedong is only in the etiquette chapter” (Bnet). One of the government spokesmen even claims that “the new history is less ideological, and that suits the political goals of today." The changes “are part of a broader effort by the Chinese government to promote a more stable, less violent view of Chinese history that serves today's economic and political goals” (Bnet). Despite the Chinese government’s intentions, these reasons resemble many characteristic of propaganda presented by Ellul in his book “The Characteristic of Propaganda.”

This event has really made me wonder whether my perception of the past is the right one. Because if it is true that the main reason we study history is so that we learn from it and stop ourselves from repeating the mistakes, wouldn’t it be wise to learn from the right history? Though this is the case, McChesney would argue that it is impossible to know what the right history is since “it is impossible for [anyone] to detect the actual values at play that determine what makes up history books. Therefore, I believe that the best thing anyone could do to learn about history is to learn it from as much sources as possible. Moreover, I also think that every argument made about good journalist and how it requires a “vigorous public debate” can and should be made about historian also (McChesney 252). Lastly, to answer the question I posted earlier; I believed that the past cannot really be known.