Stuart Hall...

Hall's work covers issues of hegemony and cultural studies, taking a post-Gramscian stance. He regards language-use as operating within a framework of power, institutions and politics/economics. This view presents people as producers and consumers of culture at the same time. (Hegemony, in Gramscian theory, refers to the cultural production of 'consent' as opposed to 'coercion'.)

Stuart Hall has also addressed theoretically the issue of how people make sense of media texts. He parts from Althusser in emphasizing more scope for diversity of response to media texts. In a key paper, 'Encoding/Decoding', Stuart Hall (1980), argued that the dominant ideology is typically inscribed as the 'preferred reading' in a media text, but that this is not automatically adopted by readers. The social situations of readers/viewers/listeners may lead them to adopt different stances. 'Dominant' readings are produced by those whose social situation favours the preferred reading; 'negotiated' readings are produced by those who inflect the preferred reading to take account of their social position; and 'oppositional' readings are produced by those whose social position puts them into direct conflict with the preferred reading. Hall insists that there remain limits to interpretation: meaning cannot be simply 'private' and 'individual'

In order to see how hegemonic ideals of white supremacy hide themselves in current media, it is first necessary to illustrate the racist stereotypes which evolved in the media of a less liberal society

The first is the slave figure which could take the form of either the 'dependable, loving… devoted "Mammy" with the rolling eyes, or the faithful fieldhand… attached and devoted to "his" master' (Hall, 1995:21). The underlying message of such images is clear: the slave is someone who is willing to serve their master; their devotion allows a white audience to displace any guilt about their history of colonialism and slavery. The consequence of such messages relates to Gramsci's idea of 'spontaneous consent' (Strinati, 1995:165) or 'consensual control', whereby individuals '"voluntarily" assimilate the world-view or hegemony of the dominant group' (Ransome, 1992:150). Thus the practice of slavery has been made acceptable and therefore goes unquestioned; the destructive potential of such images is evident - especially when you consider that the slave figure is prominent in the classic film Gone With the Wind (Hall, 1995:21).

Although loving, the slave is simultaneously depicted as unpredictable and capable of 'turning nasty', taking us to the second of Hall's base images - the native (ibid:21). Their primitive nature means they are cheating, cunning, savage and barbarian. In movies, we expect them 'to appear at any moment out of the darkness to decapitate the beautiful heroine, kidnap the children … And against them is always counterposed the isolated white figure, alone "out there", confronting his Destiny' (ibid:21). The primitivism of black people demonstrates their suitability to their servile positions; the fear of their unpredictability provides justification for maintaining control over them, while the image of the civilised white man 'confronting his Destiny' makes the exercise of this control not only acceptable, but also respectable.

The last of Hall's variants is that of the clown or entertainer, implying an 'innate' humour in the black man (ibid:22). Interestingly, the distinction is never made as to whether we are laughing with or at the clown; overt racism is rare in the media rather, says Hall, it is 'inferential' (ibid:20). Tony Freeth (producer, director and active member of the Campaign Against Racism in the Media, CARM) adeptly puts this concept into the context of his experience of the BBC: 'It all takes place in an atmosphere of smiling, middle-class gentility, an air of righteous indignation if confronted with charges of racism. No one in TV shouts racist abuse at black people… No one in TV physically assaults black people, they simply feed us on a diet of "Blacks are the problem"' (Freeth, 1985:26-7). This, of course, is a more recent instance of inferential racism, but the implication is the same - that racism is inferred and reinforced in 'the routine structures of everyday thought' (Gitlin, 1994:517) that Gramsci says we should focus on.

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-rol6.htm