This is what happens when u study too much communication theories… You start viewing things differently… i just saw the devil wears prada… i would say a good comedy but a very sad movie as well from a communication student’s point of view… I think the main message about the movie was about ideologies and how they are put into to us… a good movie indeed with a happy ending…
Anyways to the main part of my theory… The film focusses on Andrea (Anne Hethaway) who goes for a job interview in the top fashion magazine in the US. Anyways, to cut the crapt short, she is an average girl who doesnt give a damn about fashion… She dresses up like a grandma as one of the characters says as well… And the job to her is just a normal job… Its something for her to start on before moving to her real career… But she is made to believe that her job is the dream job of thousands of girls…. Ideology comes in… Now this girl doesnt know anything about fashion… She blabbers about her work to her bf and all the fashion stuff… and the editor of the magazine, Miranda (merryl Strepp) makes andrea’s life miserale by making do all kinds of chores… now the part she picks out the fashion designs to the put in the magazine from all the other choices… therefore, we think we are chosing the items we want from this magazines but in fact they have all been pre-arranged for us… In other words, its not really liberal democratic… We dun have the freedom of choosing wat we want… Like the editor decides wat should be put in the magazine for the readers thus giving the readers something which they think they will want but actually it has been arranged for them…
The same goes for fashion… We are not deciding wat we wear… what we wear has already been decided for us… If u listen to the lines of the movie properly, the part where andrea laughs while miranda is trying to choose which belt suits the dress, an interesting conversation takes place… andrea feels that both belts are the same… but miranda thinks different…each belt has its own uniqueness… she then points out to the blue sweater andrea wears… to andrea its nothing… but to miranda, the sweater is more than the sweater… the colour blue represents something and the sweater she wore was part of a fashion collection a few years ago… in other words, wat we wear has been decided for us…
My favourite part of the movie is the part where Andrea brings some gifts to her friends… One of the girls take a $1900 handbag… and andrea’s boyfriend says why do women need so many handbags? cant they just have one to put all their stuff inside… but the other guy says "fashion is not about utility…an accessory is something that is used to express individual identity." now this brings us tp althusser’s theory on ideology…"Ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to the real conditions of existence." (Louis Althusser,p.68,course reader)… wat does this mean? An expensive handbag gives the identity of a rich person, someone with class… But its only a represntation… It is not real…
There is another part in the movie where the bald guy tells andrea that the magazine is not just a magazine… It is a signing beacon of hope for some people… Indeed it is… Magazines can be very influential… We tend to believe wat is said in them without thinking… this is where ideologies are produced… if the magazine states that this dress is the best autumn collection, than it is… and most of magazines are western and we embody the western ideology… the fact that we all go for the brand’s and the lates fashion design shows us that we have lost our identity… As Marx puts it, the dominant ideology is determined by material forces. this is wat that is happening…
Now Andrea than changes her fashion style…She is the example of that ideology… The girl who didnt wear high heels soon wears it… The girl that doesnt care about fashion soon is obssessed with it… It has taken over her identity… As Giddens quoted by Barker says, "the idividual attempts to construct a coherent identity narrative by which the self forms a trajectory of development from the past to an anticipated future."(1991,75)… Andrea breaks up with her bf because of this… He realizes the change in her… she has become part of the society controlled by that ideolgy…
There are more interesting messages in this movie but i guess its not really important mentioning…anyways the conclusion is, society today are easily influenced by the dominant ideologies surrounding us…from the clothes we wear, to the food we eat, to the people we mix with to everything we do…its all based on ideology…
The End…
OH MY GOD!!! WATS HAPPENING TO ME? WHY DID I JUST WASTE 2 HOURS OF MY TIME DOING THIS? FOR WHAT? IT CAN BE CONSIDERED A SAMPLE ESSAY…COM2411 HAS TAKEN OVER ME…
