Oldal 399 [399]
‘A Woman from a Newspaper’: A New Face for Ideology and Old Habits
story of the photograph was intentionally arranged and performed in front of the
camera producing the image in accordance with a particular idea and vision. Here
it is useful to follow Peter Burke’s (2001) understanding of the Lacanian ‘gaze’,
which assumes that despite the photographer’s intentions, the act of photography
is always influenced by dominant patterns of perception. In the case of ‘a women
from a newspaper’ the ‘gaze’ is ideologically twofold: it is male and it is embedded
in the doctrine of building a new socialistic state. It classifies women as objects of
narrative conventions, which include images dominated by stereotypical themes
and activities needed for constructing ideological foundation of the new post-war
reality.
However, most of the visual stories in the newspapers do not destroy either
the expectations or the narrations locked in the formula of seeing, telling and pro¬
ducing particular contents concerning women. ‘The narrations connected to the
women’s images in socialism, solely preserved the visual, as well as the apparent
equality and freedom. It is rather difficult to speak about the profound transfor¬
mation of the situation of women in society, which was based on the principle of
‘indispensible commitment’ and excluded individual social progress for women as
well as their possibilities of self-realisation (see Papi¢ 1989).
“The Working Woman’: An Unnecessary Feminism?
The social roles of women in socialism were controlled and organised in accordance
with general expectations and dominant ideology.
One has to agree that ideologies may, and often are, defined as collective repre¬
sentations for social groups as well as axiomatic assumptions about such representa¬
tions (see van Dijk 2006). Therefore, ideologies structure not only identities, aims,
norms, values and practices, but also the internal relations of societies, groups and
classes. Additionally, ideologies also encompass gender differences, including their
particular socio-cultural interests, imaginaries and consciousness. The category of
gender, entangled in the history of socialist realism, played a significant role in
the socio-cultural interpretation of the world, in which ideology was a vehicle for
exerting pressure on particular individuals or social groups and “a specific form
of thinking, which although does not have any cognitive value, rationalizes ‘ana¬
chronic’ practices in particular situation” (Mannheim 1936 cited in Wioch 2009:
34). Indoctrination and mystification, as derivatives of ideology and inseparable
components of real life, supported the process of construction and reproduction
of meanings, which eventually served the particular interests of specific groups and
indicated their social and historical values, simultaneously making them privileged
within the social system of power. However, it does not mean that one should
reduce the analysis to merely totalising interests of a chosen social group. What is
crucial here is the boundary ‘visible’ in socially situated thinking, solid divisions
and durable judgments, which often precludes one part of the society (for example
women) from realising their personal aims.
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