How useful are ideas about narrative in analysing music videos? Refer to the close study products “Ghost Town” and “Letter To The Free” in your answer.

Narrative theory plays a big part in the music videos “Ghost Town” and “Letter To the Free” as both videos allow the audience to engage and understand the storylines throughout them. It is also important that the audience can understand what the videos are trying to convey, hence the narrative’s importance. 

Common’s “Letter To The Free” focuses on racism and the downfall of the prison system. The video displays the artist in an abandoned prison with other black musicians. This video particularly links with Props theory, which includes the idea of stock characters. Common can be seen as the hero in this video, as he is raising awareness to large racial issues still badly occurring today. The prison system can be viewed as the villain, leaving the audience to decide what to support and making them feel apart of the video itself. 

In the music video “Ghost Town”, the band members are shown driving through a run down city. The audience is made to feel apart of this video due to this specific action, as it is though the audience are being made aware of the damaged surroundings while the band are. This video links with Todorov’s theory – with a beginning, middle and end. The audience and band are passing through the ruined city and by the end are driving along empty roads.

Feminist by definition is a political position. The Feminine refers to a set of culturally defined characteristics determined at feminine.

Systemic Societal Sexism:

• misogyny – fear or hatred of women (subordination)
• sexism – discriminatory technique 
• patriarchy – male power 
• institutional (groups, organisations) perspective and individual perspective

Historical contexts// key points

• 3 Wave Feminism in the mid 90s
• Barker and Jane (2016) >
• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion – pluralism/ inter-sectional 
• individual and do-it-yourself tactics cyber activism 
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• the re-appropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’
• sex positivity was more prevalent
• more active in cultural and pluralism – deveolopment on first 

MULVEY

• draws on the work by:
• Jacques Lacan – (identity- he was interested the first time a child recognises themselves in a mirror (mirror stage). He spoke about how we are socially constructed and that representation is constructed through the eyes of others another.
• ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘ – written in 1973 and published in 1975.
• Fetishism = ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ parts of the female body.
• scopophilia = the pleasure to be had in looking(used in the media as marking tool to increase profits)
• vouyerism = the sexual pleasure found in looking
• controlling and subjective gaze  = the male gaze(term brought to relevance by MULVAY.

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female.”

Mulvey

• Systemic Societal Sexism:
• misogyny – fear or hatred of women (subordination)
• sexism – discriminatory technique
• patriarchy – male power
• institutional (groups, organisations) perspective and individual perspective

Feminism: critical articulation for equality

• 4 waves of feminism
• Michelene Wandor, ‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘ (1981:13). – SECOND WAVE FEMINISM 60s, 70s – the pill, divorcee, sexuality
• 1st Wave – Suffer-gets
• fighting for the votes and parliamentary consideration
• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Theorists:

• Jean Kilbourne – looked at magazines, saw structuralism in sexism – women in mass media – second wave
• Laura Mulvey * – 1975 wrote essay – Visual pleasure and narrative cinema – second wave
• Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media.
• ‘What is visual pleasure’?
• Freud – scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze ‘
• Underpinned by Voyeurism (sexual pleasure in looking)
• Structured around patriarchy – ‘male lookers, females are the looked at’.
• Camera is representing male gaze – women exhibition
• Fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘), the way in which parts of the female body are presented as something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘  – Freud-en idea – dehumanisng
• Mulvey draws on the work of Jacques Lacan (‘this mirror moment‘), highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen – ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘. – Identify formation
• If patriarchy control representation, children will grow up believing dominate ideology/representation
• Sut Jhally‘s same as Mulvey but with Music Videos. Language of music videos linking to representation of women.

3 and 4 Wave Feminism:

• 3 Wave Feminism – Raunch Culture*: mid 90s
• Second seemed to disappear
• Barker and Jane (2016) >
• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion – pluralism/ inter-sectional
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics – change cultural – cyber activism
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyber-activism
• the re-appropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity
• 4 more active in cultural + pluralism – deveolopment on first
• ‘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’Hendry & Stephenson (2018:50

• Queer Theory – Intersectionality – multiple personalities/identities/representations
• Bell Hook(black feminist) – Multicultural Intersectionality
• power relationships between black and white women’. So that ‘in a postcolonial context, women carry the double burden of being colonized by imperial powers and subordinated by colonial and native men’.

• Misogyny – a fear or hatred of woman.
• Sexism – a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society.
• Patriarchy – when a man is in charge.
• Feminism – a critical articulation for equality.
• Intersectionality – the belief that there is more then just two types (male/female, straight/gay) there can be blurs between them.

Toril Moi

As a final part of this brief introduction, it is useful to draw upon Toril Moi’s (1987) crucial set of distinctions between: ‘feminist’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’.

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Laura Mulvey

• Wrote an essay in 1975 called ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’.
• Her thesis being the role of the male gaze.
• Theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘women as image, man as bearer of the look’.
• Active male (the one who’s looking), passive female (one who’s being looked at).
• Scopophilia- pleasure in looking.
• Vouyerism- sexual pleasure gained in looking.
• Fetishism- erotic attachment to an inanimate object or an ordinarily asexual part of the human body – objectifying and dehumanising.

Jacques Lacan (the mirror moment)

• Psychologist, specialised in child development.
• Mulvey draws on his work on the mirror moment.
• Mirror stage of development, realising you’re a human being and your own person, at a young age.
• Mulvey highlights the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen ‘complex process of likeness and difference’.

Sut Jhally

• His work at the Media Education Foundation (where Jean Kilbourne also produced much or her work) draws a connection between the aesthetics of pornography and the codes and conventions of the music video.

Differences between 2nd and 3rd Wave Feminism

• 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 re-appropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism

• 3rd wave of feminism characterised as a reaction to 2nd wave feminists coined by Naomi Wolf . Fighting against the Anti-sexualised narrative of 2nd wave feminists. More aware of feminist divisions, gay, straight, black, white – less blanket terms across ‘all-woman’.

• ‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in 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’ – Hendy and Stephenson.

Judith Butler

• Applied queer theory to Feminist Critical Thinking.
• Reductionist, essentialist approach towards binary oppositions, male/female, feminine/masculine, man/woman.
• Suggests gender is fluid, changeable, plural.
• She thinks you act/perform in a way that links to who we want to be perceived as.

http://mymediacreative.com/feminist-critical-thinking/

Systemic Societal Sexism?

• MISOGYNY = This is a term that derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women, or put simply: SEXISM, a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society, otherwise known as PATRIARCHY.

• we are looking at sexism from an institutional perspective + individual level

feminism

= A critical articulation for equality

second wave of feminism American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. – according to michelene wandor

As a final part of this brief introduction, it is useful to draw upon Toril Moi’s (1987) crucial set of distinctions between: ‘feminist’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’.

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Laura Mulvey – specifically focus on her 1975 polemical essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘. Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media.

“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” = females are looked at and males look

cinema offers a number of possible pleasures’. One is based around Freudian psychoanalytic concept of scopophilia taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ 

fetishism – parts of the female body are presented as something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ – ‘close-ups of legs . . . or a face‘, of lips, hips, bums, tums, thighs, legs and breasts, etc. etc) which are exaggerated through cinematic conventions of ‘scale’, ‘size’, ‘focus’. = women become objects

Jacques Lacan = interested in child development, you slowly developing consciousness – highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen – ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘. She also, discusses the position of the audience, categorising them as spectators who project their ‘repressed desire onto the performer‘.

Sut Jhally‘s work at the Media Education Foundation (where Jean Kilbourne also produced much or her work) draws a connection between the aesthetics of pornography and the codes and conventions of the music video. = how music videos link to the representation of women

Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism

• 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
• According to Ariel Levy, in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs raunch culture is ‘a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars – the conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘ (2006:74). In other words, while on the one hand, the idea of liberation involves new freedoms for sexual exhibition, experimentation and presentation, on the other, it may well be playing out the same old patterns of exploitation, objectification and misogyny?
• ‘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 = much more drastic and active than 3rd wave

Intersectionality: Queer Theory

Van Zoonen

Similarly, Lisbet Van Zoonen also highlights the idea that the concept of ‘woman’ is not a homogenous, collective noun. That students need to be aware of the differences between women, that ‘gender is not the defining quality alone for women, and intersects with race, sexuality and class.’ (Hendry & Stephenson 2018:52). Van Zoonen, develops and applies ideas of cultural hegemony (GRAMSCI) and interpellation (ALTHUSSER) towards feminist studies,

Hook: Multicultural Intersectionality

As Barker and Jane note, ‘black feminists have pointed ot the differences between black and white women’s experiences, cultural representations and interests’ (2016:346). In other words, arguments around gender also intersect with postcolonial arguments around ‘power relationships between black and white women’. So that ‘in a postcolonial context, women carry the double burden of being colonized by imperial powers and subordinated by colonial and native men’ (ibid).

As a way of exploring this notion of intersectionality ie the idea that an approach such as feminism, is NOT UNIVERSAL, SINGULAR or HOMOGENEOUS as this is a REDUCTIONIST and ESSENTIALIST way of seeing the world. Rather intersectionality highlights the way ideas and concepts such as ‘female‘, ‘feminist‘, ‘feminine‘ (Moi 1987) intersect with other concepts, ideas and approaches, such as, sexuality, class, age, education, religion, ability. A way of exploring these ideas is through the work of bell hook.

bell hook (always spelt in lower case – real name: Gloria Jean Watkins) advocates media literacy, the need to engage with popular culture to understand class struggle, domination, renegotiation and revolution. Put another, encouraging us all to ‘think critically’ to ‘change our lives’.ethnicity and race, see for example here work ‘Cultural Criticism and Transformation‘ which was another video production by the Media Education Foundation (MEF), directed by Sut Jhally – part 1 below, parts 2 & 3 at the end of this post.

Misogyny: is defined as hatred of women or girls, expressed as disgust, intolerance or entrenched prejudice, serving to legitimate women’s oppression.

Patriacrchy: Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property. 

Sexism from an institutional perspective and at an individual level. Looks at groups, organisations.

Feminism: critical articulation for equality. Four waves of feminism. After the first wave of feminism, which was galvanised by organisations such as, the British Women’s Suffrage Committee (1867), the International Council of Women (1888), the The International Alliance of Women (1904), and so on who, in early part of the 20th Century, worked to get women the right to vote.

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

The work of Laura Mulvey and specifically focus on her 1975 polemical essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘. Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media. She argues that females are looked at and males are the lookers.

Scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ ie OBJECTIFICATION); another is vouyerism (the sexual pleasure gained in looking); another is fetishism, the way in which parts of the female body are presented as something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ which is dehumanising as they become objects and not people. ‘close-ups of legs . . . or a face‘, of lips, hips, bums, tums, thighs, legs and breasts, etc. etc) which are exaggerated through cinematic conventions of ‘scale’, ‘size’, ‘focus’.

Sut Jhally‘s work at the Media Education Foundation, draws a connection between the aesthetics of pornography and the codes and conventions of the music video.

Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism

Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, coined by Naomi Wolf, it was a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and recontextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. In particular, the third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism. Eg, a difference between a black woman’s experience and a white woman’s.

• 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

Intersectionality: Queer Theory

Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women’s studies. “Queer theory” can have various meanings depending upon its usage. Two common usages of queer theory include a 1) methodology for literary analysis and 2) a productive practice of theory.

Hook: Multicultural Intersectionality

As Barker and Jane note, ‘black feminists have pointed to the differences between black and white women’s experiences, cultural representations and interests’ (2016:346). In other words, arguments around gender also intersect with postcolonial arguments around ‘power relationships between black and white women’. So that ‘in a postcolonial context, women carry the double burden of being colonized by imperial powers and subordinated by colonial and native men’.

Systemic Societal Sexism

Misogyny: This is a term that derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women

Sexism: the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female

Patriarchy: a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society

Sexism from an institutional perspective and at an individual level:

Feminism: a critical articulation for equality

<Feminist<>Female<>Feminine>

As a final part of this brief introduction, it is useful to draw upon Toril Moi’s (1987) crucial set of distinctions between: ‘feminist’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’.

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Laura Mulvey:

1975 polemical essay:

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘. Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media.

One is based around Freudian psychoanalytic concept of scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ ie OBJECTIFICATION)

another is vouyerism (the sexual pleasure gained in looking)

fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘), the way in which parts of the female body are presented as something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ – ‘close-ups of legs . . . or a face‘, of lips, hips, bums, tums, thighs, legs and breasts, etc. etc) which are exaggerated through cinematic conventions of ‘scale’, ‘size’, ‘focus’.

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.

Music Video: ‘The Dreamworld?’

Sut Jhally‘s work at the Media Education Foundation (where Jean Kilbourne also produced much or her work) draws a connection between the aesthetics of pornography and the codes and conventions of the music video.

Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism

• 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

Intersectionality: Queer Theory

Hook: Multicultural Intersectionality

As Barker and Jane note, ‘black feminists have pointed ot the differences between black and white women’s experiences, cultural representations and interests’ (2016:346). In other words, arguments around gender also intersect with postcolonial arguments around ‘power relationships between black and white women’. So that ‘in a postcolonial context, women carry the double burden of being colonized by imperial powers and subordinated by colonial and native men’ (ibid).