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The Celebration/Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998, Denmark) was the first film to have been certified under the rigours of the Dogme95 Vow of Chastity (von Trier and Vinterberg, 1995). It is also notable as a political film that presents a rebellion against an abusive patriarchal regime on the microcosmic bourgeoisie estate during the titular birthday celebration. In fashioning a comprehensive treatment of The Celebration's text and its context, I open with an account of ideology that is indebted to the materialist emphases of Louis Althusser (1994) and Terry Eagleton (1991). Next, I briefly address the trajectory of Denmark's national film history out of which Dogme and The Celebration emerge. With respect to Dogme, I cross-examine assumptions about realism by positing it as irreducibly a style and artistic strategy (Stam 2000); in turn, I shift the accent from the quest for realism to whether The Celebration meets the looser standard of being surface-plausible. In detail, I discuss the film's style as it deviates from realism via shadings of foreshadowing and extensive cross-cutting. Finally, I interpret the film as a progressive (but not humourless) myth of ‘bottom-up’ revolt against abusive authority and the ideologies that nourish it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation orients to sociological propaganda (Ellul, 1965) and its implications in a new media environment. In particular, the investigation concerns seven reader-composed threads from the online version of the left-wing US publication, The Nation. The seven threads encompassed 931 posted comments in which posters clashed over contemporary US politics. I posit that the threads' discourse reproduces sociological propaganda; specifically, the "American Way of Life" as channelled through a technological substrate that is assumed to be an enabler of vigorous democratic discourse. Alongside sociological propaganda, I unpack the ideology that is manifested in the topoi and uses of evidence that posters present (van Dijk, nd). Despite often heated confrontations between posters of the left and right, consensus was often part of the threads' endgame in which the "American Way of Life" was affirmed laterally between citizens. This conclusion is also born out by the ensemble of posters' dismissiveness toward a conspiracy poster who is not as easily squared with the prevailing sociological propaganda. On the basis of this sample, I conclude with an evaluation of new media's potential and limitations with respect to enhanced democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay conducts an ideological analysis of George F. Will's editorials published between July 1, 2002 and July 8, 2004. Will is a prestigious, high-profile, and decorated commentator within the US media landscape. Across the 196 editorials examined here, his discourse moves squarely within a right-wing meta-ideology that strongly conditions his judgments (about, e.g., Usonians and Europeans, Republicans and Democrats, the invasion of Iraq). Following in the tradition of Teun A. van Dijk's scholarship, the paper demonstrates that Will's editorializing relies heavily on “Populism”, “Us/Them” dichotomies, and “National Self-Glorification” in channeling the right-wing meta-ideology. In his editorial construction of reality, and of the players within it, Will conveys his version of the meta-ideology with its particular accents (e.g., an Otherizing “Them” posture toward Europe). In doing so, Will re-circulates and re-affirms the right-wing meta-ideology and endows it with prestige and the patina of “common sense”—even as it moves athwart of facts on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]