NOT FINAL ESSAY
TO WHAT EXTENT DOES AN ANALYSIS OF THE CLOSE STUDY PRODUCTS GHOST TOWN AND LETTER TO THE FREE SUPPORT THIS VIEW?
POSSIBLE ESSAY STRUCTURE
(note don’t forget to support all of your ideas with details, examples and illustrations from the 2 CSP’s)
- What is the link between society and media (ie McDougall/ Fenton)
- How best to link 2 music videos and society? Postcolonialism
- Postcolonial theory – Gilroy & WEB du Bois (double consciousness, hybridisation)
- Postcolonialism is a way of understanding ‘the other’ Lacan – mirror theory / Edward Said Orientialism
- How can music videos change ideas? Culture as a site of struggle – Althusser ISA / Gramsci Hegemony
- Conclusion
Lecan: Mirror Theory
- seeing yourself in the other
- we use “the other” as a way of exploring ourselves
- for example, if you were black in the 1970s, you would have no appearance of identity due to a lack of representation
Edward Said and The “Orient”
- The orient could not represent itself
- media is the lens at which identity is formed
Hegemonic Struggle (Althusser)
- ideological state apparatus (ISAs) used to describe the ideologies tht are displayed to children through media that forms an identity
- interpolation – all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject
- a ‘tug of war’ – forced to look and think but you can reject ideology to create a struggle within society
ghost town was a song by the Specials, which was written as a commentary about inner-city violence, mainly inner-city postcolonial violence. Letter to the free, by Common, also discusses racial justice, with the main discussion being the unjust incarceration of black people. Ghost town and letter to the free therefore somewhat support the view that media should be challenged. Furthermore, this is seen in Letter to the Free where