location 1 – woodland

location 2 – cliffpath

location 3 – sand dune

location 4 underwater

location 5 – field

location 5 – home

location 6 – beach (dream)

these are from one of my locations I chose for my music video

As i have decided to film mostly in slo-mo, my test shots are in slo-mo.

• main character has lost a friend, not wanting to accept it
• she feels lonely, isolated and vulnerable
• revisits the places they spent time together – walks in her past footsteps
• dances for freedom
• falls into water “ocean” – feeling trapped and can’t escape – the Tragedy that has happened is slowing drowning her
• dreams about husky – huskies signify your appetite for freedom and the journeys that you take in life, whether you want to or not. – as they also symbolise inner strength, the running clip represents her inner strength escaping (shes losing her inner strength)
• the end scenes show her wearing a black dress (mourning)
• she lights a candle for her lost friend
• blows it out, showing she has finally accepted it and moved on.

An introduction towards theories of gender representation

Systematic Society Sexism

MISOGYNY – a fear and hatred of women (SEXISM) – a way of exerting power and control in society (PATRIARCHY)

A critical articulation for equality

According to Michelene Wandor, ‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s.” – sexism refers to systematic ways where men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically – males are always superior to female

1st wave feminism – feminist critical thought became much more prominent and pronounced during the counter cultural movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s

1st wave fo feminism = galvanised by organisations such as the British Women’s Suffrage Committee (1867) the International Council of Women (1888) The International Alliance of Women (1904) = – worked to get women the right to vote

1970s – the womens liberation movement set great store by the process of conscious raising – influencing everyday conduct and attitudes + exposing mechanisms of patriarchy – a cultural mind set that had perpetuated a sexual equality.

Tori Mois

feminist = a political position

female = a matter of biology

feminine – set of culturally defined characteristics

Kean Kilbournes

looks at visual narrative media

Laura Mulvey

1975 polemical essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘ – role of the male gaze (theoretical approach that suggests the role of “women as image, man as bearer of the look”

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed and their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact

• “cinema offers a number of possible pleasures – freuds theory of scopophilla (taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze -OBJECTIFICATION)
• vouyerism – sexual pleasure gained in looking
• fetishism – quality of a cut-out – parts of female body are presented as something to be looked at (OBJECTIFIED and SEXUALISED)

Jacques Lacan

mirror moment – highlights parallel between the mirror stage of child development and mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen. ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘. 

explains that the audience are spectators who project their ‘repressed desire onto the performer‘.

Sut Jhally

draws a connection between the aesthetics of pornography and the codes and conventions of the music video.”

There’s no such thing as communication that doesn’t have something behind it, that it is always constructed by someone. And I want people to be active in the construction of their own world because if you’re not active in the construction of your own world then you’re a victim of someone else’s construction.“

Raunch Culture – 3rd wave feminism (1990s)

• coined by Naomi wolf
• response to generation gap between the feminist movement of 1960s (challenging + reconstextualising definitions of femininity
• 3rd wave sees women lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism.
• according to Barker and Jane, 3rd wave feminism put forward the following characteristics:
• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

Ariel Levy book “raunch culture” is ‘a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars – the conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘

‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’

4th wave feminism – same as 3rd but more active – from the radical stance of #MeToo to the Free the Nipple campaign, which Miley Cyrus endorsed and supported (which may encourage you to re-evaluate your initial reading of her video Wrecking Ball above), the use of new media technologies has been a clear demarcation for broadening out the discussion and arguments that are played out in this line of critical thinking.

intersectionality: Queer Theory (founded by Alan Sinfield and Johnathon Dollimore)

Judith Butler

• expressed doubt over the reductionist, essentialist, approach towards the binary oppositions presented in terms of: male/female; feminine/masculine, man/woman.
• suggests that gender is fluid, changeable, plural 

ideas presented by Laura Mulvey seem to suggest that gender is fixed – male/female – that it is structured by institutions and those powerful individuals who are able to exert power and control

we have multiple identities that are performed to different people, in different social settings, under different social conditions.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Baudrillard “Neither the product nor the productive effort are valued, but only the simulacrum”

In Simulacra and Simulation (1981), Baudrillard says that the illusion of the system is to provide a perfect explanation detached from imperfect reality. He argues that society and economy work because people believe that there is an inherent rationality in economy and society. What he calls Disneyworld is the invisible machine that supports such belief. In Disneyworld, a worker is not a person, but a sign. Time is synchronized, space is obliterated and both are represented in the same context. We deal with a widespread metastasis, a clone of the world and of our mental universe (Baudrillard, 2000).

A way of looking at current times

The way things are copied? the way things are surface level and superficial (re-imagining, pastiche, parody, copy, bricolage) self rerentiality.

Post modern culture is consumer culture where the emphasis on style eclipses the emphasis on utility or need

Most media is based on surface signs and has a preoccupation with visual style

A loss of metanarrative (theover arching ideas of life)

Parody VS Pastiche

Pastiche is a piece of work that imitates the work of a previous artist

Parody is a piece of work that imitates whilst ridiculing or having ironic meaning

Bricolage

‘involves the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane, 2016:237)

Intertexuality texts inside of texts

Fragmentary consumption creates fragmentary identities. Individuals are alienated from society

The meaning of texts resides in the reader and the theory of decoding and encoding

Jean Baudrillard uses the term implosion to describe the world. Along with Fredric Jameson and Jean Francois-Lyotard discuss the loss of metanarrative

Jean Baudrillard says the new real is just a representation of the real ( simulacrum and the hyperreal)

Richard Hoggart wrote uses of literacy in 1959. He spoke about “neighborhood lives”. He said the change from pre-war life which was ” an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near ” and the change after the war into post modernism

Shuker speaks about fragmentary and breakup up traditional understanding ” music videos have a preoccupation with visual styles”

Strinati “in a postmodern world, surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture”

Barker and Jane ” involves the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning “

Definitions

1. pastice
2. parody
3. bricolage
4. intertextuality
5. metanarrative
6. hyperreality
7. simulacrum
8. comnumerist socieaty
9. fragmentary identities
10. implosion
11. cultural appropriation
12. reflexivity