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An alternative Institutional structure

Ohcomely claims to be an “arms-wide-open mag – inclusive, down-to-earth, and heart-led” that is published bi-monthly made in London.

Forms of distribution

• Main stream News agents and stores Sainsburys, Waitrose and WH Smiths. They also place their magazines in samll cafes, indie shops and museums
• They use a online newstand picsandink
• A six month (£14) subscription delivered to the customer.

Oh is published by Pirates Ahoy, a subsidiary of Iceberg Press. This means there is no vertical integration and both iceberg and oh are ran by multiple people removing an over powering head and are no part of a large conglomerate

Audience

“All of our parents (except mine) and all of our little cousins. The distributors seem to think our readers are in their 20s or 30s, mainly female and quite creative. That’s true, on the whole, but I think it’s turned out a lot more varied than that, which was a pleasant surprise.”

Says the Founder of OH Des Tan

Oh claims to have a wide r

• Social Media Reach: 100,000
• Readers Per Issue: 25,000
• Average Age of reader: 27
• Sold through independents, WHSmith and international outlets

History

OH has published quarterly since 2008. It was as a print publication distributed to people at events like Novell BrainShare and Micro Focus Universe. Oh created their website in 2014 to bring the articles published in the print magazine to a wider audience. In 2020 the website is used as the principal point for publishing content.

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. (9 marks)

The ideas of narrative are better at analysing Ghost town over Letter to the Free but both contain prominent Narrative theories. Ghost town use a sequential narrative structure which holds up Todorov’s Tripartite theory. On the other hand Letter to the free use very few narrative elements in the music video and relies on the audio portion to present the message but it does use kernels and satellites to aid the prominent points that need to be presented.

In Ghost Town the car is used as the main driving force for the video with equalibrium being constructed with close up shots of the band in the car and then using wider and wider angle shots as the song reaches its climax and then the band leaves the car and the industrial city to escape and resolve the video . This sequential “escape” shows the videos aim of he need escape society in the 1980’s and possibly even comment on Margret Thatcher as Prime Minister at the time. By using Todorov’s tripartite narrative structure it forces the viewer into a certain preferred reading that the band wants to portray. Furthermore on Freytags’s Pyramid the climax is near/at the end inciting a incident and by delaying it it allows the viewer to craft their own prediction, of the climax, for longer. This creates contrast with the ending that the band intend making the viewer reconsider and think about the issue that is offered.

Common’s Letter to the Free is a juxtaposition compared to the weight the narrative structure holds in Ghost Town. It uses very few major narrative structures or theories but relies on the more subtle theories like Seymour Chatman’s Kernels and Satellites and Roland Barthes Proairetic and Hermenuetic codes. Both these theories can only aid a narrative but struggle to create one on their own. This means that the narrative of the video has to be in the music therefore showing that sometimes narrative ideas can struggle to analyse music videos. Common use a jail as his setting for the video which forms the main kernel of the video aiding Commons message of the mass incarceration of black people as a new form of slavery. He uses his band members as satellites throughout the video within the prison , these don’t aid the narrative but give context to the message. The inclusion of a predominantly black cast gives the video the view that they are the people Common sings about and are trying to fight from inside the system. He does this with few proairetic codes and almost all hermenuetic giving the viewer an easier time to link what is being said in the music to the narrative of the video without over stimulating them with action. This furthermore agrees with the suggestion that it is the song carrying the narrative.

Overall there are always narrative structures and theories in music videos but some are more prominent then others as not all theories are used Therefore narrative is always useful when analysing music videos but is limited to how much of the message it can carry. Although it will always either drive or aid the message of the video.

Narrative Theory

I am highlighting the sequential nature of the movie

starts in reverse photo preveiw. two stories simultanios black and white difference

pre story reexplaining the start

Satellites and kernels (Seymour Chatman)

Character types and function (Vladimir Propp)

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

http://mymediacreative.com/postcolonialism/7/

Representation and identity

Race and ethnicity through empire and colonialism (Atlantic slave trade)

Orientalism (Edward said)

The link between culture, imperial power and colonialism

Culture creates an accepted grid for filtering through he orient into western consciousness

V.G.Kiernan quote An economic system like a nation or a religion, lives not by bread alone, but by beliefs, visions, daydreams as well, and these may be no less vital to it for being erroneous

Edward Said The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism

Paul Gilroy A civilizing mission that had to conceal its own systematic brutality in order to be effective and attractive

Jacques Lacan

We are socially constructed and only understand who we are by exploring the other

Louis Althusser

ISA

Ideological State Apparatus

Hailing / interpolation the way you are called and others view you therefore how you view yourself

The dominant ideas are those of the ruling class

Frantz Fannon

wretched of the earth 1961

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46)
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’.

Syncretism, double consciousness & hybridisation

mechanisms for understanding cross-cultural identities.

Paul Gilroy / William Dubois

Hybridity and ambiguity in culture cultural poly valence (many cultures)

• Q1: Where can you identify ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’ in this music video?
• Q2: How does this text apply to Fanon’s 3 phase plan of action?
• Q3: How is the audience called / addressed / hailed (interpellation)? Use examples from both the lyrics and the visual grammar (shot, edit, mise-en-scene) to show how audiences are drawn into a specific subject position / ideological framework?