• Media concentration / Conglomerates / Globalisation (in terms of media ownership) – Conglomerates are massive multimedia companies that own multiple subsidiary companies.
• Vertical Integration & Horizontal Integration
• Gatekeepers – term used to refer to those with authority who can give access to people and ideas based on their preference and whether it could gain them profit.
• Regulation / Deregulation – Regulation of industries usually prevents companies from becoming too powerful and/or prevents companies harming the environment and/or to stop companies pushing specific agendas to people.
• Free market vs Monopolies & Mergers – Monopolies are companies that control their industries fully.
• Neo-liberalism and the Alt-Right -Right wing ideologies promoting the value of capitalism, free markets and de-regulation.
• Surveillance / Privacy / Security / GDPR – The General Data Protection Regulation is a law designed to protect the personal data of everyone. Companies usually want data because it allows them to more effectively market products and even ideologies towards people by targeting their specific interests and schedules.

David Hesmondhalgh and media industries:

“in its utopian presentation, creative work is now imagined only as a self-actualising pleasure, rather than a potentially arduous or problematic obligation undertaken through material necessity” 

David Hesmondhalgh among other academics propose that the media companies that people work for are often made to do arduous tasks in which freedom is little because of the capitalist structure of media industries in which bosses exploit the workers in media industries and people working in these industries are doing their jobs not out of a desire for creativity, although they may have it, but rather because of material necessity – they need their jobs to fund their lives. This contradicts the romantic and essentially propaganda-like presentation of media companies as creative work that is done as a self-actualising pleasure

Murdoch Media Empire:

THE MEDIA INFORMING/COERCING POLICY AND DECISION MAKING:

• Chomsky – manufactuing consent, making sure the media keeps the status quo
• New Labour party election 1997 – Rupert Murdoch using media to manipulate the public into voting for the candidate that suited his interests.
• Brexit – Media used to make people vote to leave the EU which would benefit the upper class and business owners because of EU regulations.
• Althusser and ISAs – the media acts as an internal state apparatus, making the sure the status quo is kept to benefit the owners of media corporations
• Murdoch dynasty – Influences the new labour party election to his benefit
• Bombshell – shows how large media corporations coerce policy to keep the employees or other outside entities from threatening the positions of those high up in the media industry. Using media corporations can influence public opinion about them and discredit anyone who stands against them.

Media products often challenge the societal and cultural contexts in which they are created. 

To what Extent does an analysis of the Close Study Products Ghost Town and Letter to the Free support this view? [25 marks] 

Professor Natalie Fenton writes “I’ve always said you can’t understand the world without the media nor the media without the world”.  “Ghost Town” and “Letter to the Free” are both Music videos that protest the societal and cultural contexts in which they were created which shows that an analysis supports the view of Media products often challenging the societal and cultural contexts in which they are created. “Ghost Town” was created by the specials, a band in the genre of two-tone music, the name symbolising the presence of both black and white artists in the genre. The music video shows fear for a future Britain under rule of people like Thatcher who amplified racial tensions and neglected poor citizens during her time as prime minister. “Letter to the Free” by the rapper Common is a protest song against the racist institution of American Prisons, which, as described by the documentary the 13^th, which this song is part of the soundtrack to, overwhelming criminalises black people and keeps them in prison to gain profit from their work as a form of slavery in the modern world, which is legal due to the exception in the 13^th amendment that allows criminals to legally work as slave labourers. Since both music videos are about the injustices within the societies and cultures they were created in, analysing them based on societal and cultural theories and contexts should prove useful. The best way to understand these works is through the ideas of postcolonialism. 

Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of Hegemonies – Systems of power that keep control on individuals in society. This concept can be seen as the culture that enforces laws to keep black people in prison due to the exception in the 13^th Amendment because of the colonialist ideologies that have rooted themselves in western society. The music video for “Letter to the Free” by Common is an example of Hegemonic struggle through art where common is challenging and protesting these racist institutions. Hegemonic struggle is the idea that hegemony is a struggle through negotiation and consent, as a continual exchange of power. Edward Said created the term “Orientalism” to describe how colonisers characterised the people they colonised with a certain lens to define them as the “other”, supporting how colonisers historically subjugated and enslaved those they colonised. To justify the supposed superiority of white Europeans Colonial nations reinforced narratives of this worldview which eventually became a prominent normal view within society. Common’s Letter to the Free, therefore, can be seen as a form of struggle through culture to change the view within hegemonies towards a more anti-racism stance. While racist ideas were slowly introduced as normal facts in society through negotiation and consent, with this music video common demonstrates how ideas that oppose the colonial ideas in hegemonies can become more accepted in society through negotiation and consent by persuasion, inculcation and acceptance.  

Said draws on the idea from Jacques Lacan about the “Mirror stage” of development in Children. The first time they see themselves in a mirror is the first time they must confront the fact that this “Mirror image” represents themselves and is how everyone else sees them. This links to media because historically due to colonialist and orientalist ideas the orient has often been portrayed as the “other” to the west, as Said points out, leading to under-representation of minorities in Western media and thus dehumanisation and this is recognised by easterners from the skewed mirror image of their cultures and people in western media. Ghost Town and Letter to the Free are both music videos about racial tensions and protesting or a fear of racist institutions. As such, minorities are represented in these videos as ordinary people which again shows the hegemonic struggle by these artists to change the ideas in society. Here though it also done to combat the orientalist ideas of the eastern world in Western society. 

Louis Althusser expands on the concepts of Gramsci by introducing Internal state apparatus (ISA). ISAs are tools used to control people in society (etc. Religion, education, culture, family etc.). He also introduces the idea of interpellation, or the way someone is hailed/called, being the way ideologies are formed, as a way to recruit subjects among individuals and to alienate others. Frantz Fanon was a Black man born in the French colony of Martinique and lived in France. He experienced this interpellation by people in France calling him racist insults, which worked to construct him and by extension all black people, as “other” to specifically by the way he was hailed, perceived and understood, or interpellated. Frantz Fanon in “the wretched of the earth” goes on to describe how colonialised people can reclaim their identity and prevent most people from colonial cultures seeing them through the eyes of Empire. He claims that colonialised people need to begin eroding the colonialist ideology by; assimilating colonial culture to the benefit of the mother country, immersion into an authentic culture where old legends will be reinterpreted and the past of which will be uncovered, and fighting, revolutionary and national literature. The music video for Letter to the Free is an example of this fighting, revolutionary literature where Common protests the colonial idea of black inferiority by finding a voice and identity through the assimilation of colonial culture for the benefit of the mother country, for example, the use of English language and western instruments to raise awareness in a western and English-speaking nation. Common’s music video is also descriptive of Frantz Fanon’s quote: “from America, black voices will take up the hymn with fuller unison. The ‘black world’ will see the light” because Common is essentially attempting to achieve the erosion of colonial ideology that Frantz Fanon described and fought for as well. 

Paul Gilroy and W.E.B. du Bois before him proposed the idea of “Double consciousness”. This is the idea that colonised people, if living in a country that has historically profited from colonisation, must live with two cultural identities – those of the colonised people they are descended from, and those of the colonial country they live in, and is the identity of most people they live around. This can be seen in the music video for Ghost town by the Specials. The black artists of the two-tone music genre must practice a form of double consciousness to survive in a culture that has historically regarded the culture of their colonised country as lesser. Postcolonial thought also praises hybridity and cultural polyvalency, which is shown in this music video and the wider two-tone genre where both black and white musicians made bands together and presented a hybrid of historically black and white music genres. Therefore, not only are the artists of the two-tone genre having to live with a double-consciousness, but with this music video they are presenting positive representations of cultural polyvalency, where it is possible for the colonised and the colonial cultures to exist together in a postcolonial society. Fanon also raised the concept of identities that are hybrid, doubled or unstable, demonstrating how individual identity can be different but also reconciled with national identity. 

 In conclusion, Analysis of music videos and other media products through the idea that many challenge the contemporary views in society is very useful for understanding both the contexts of postcolonial societies and ideologies and for understanding the messages of the media as well. 

How Useful are ideas about narrative in analysing music videos? Refer to Close study products “Ghost Town” and “Letter to the Free” in your answer. [12 marks] 

Narrative theories are useful for analysing music videos because they act as stories designed around the music that are featured in the videos. Music videos usually contain a story that has a beginning, middle, and end, or equilibrium, disruption, and new equilibrium as it is described in Todorov’s theory of tripartite narrative structure. Todorov’s theory shows the way a narrative usually plays out with something that disrupts the equilibrium the story started with which causes conflict that the protagonist and other characters must deal with to reintroduce a new equilibrium in which the characters return to normalcy. The music video for “Letter to the free” by Common follows this narrative structure where at the start of the video a mysterious black shape is interned in prison, representing the mass incarceration of minorities in the USA, but as the video progresses and the disruption of institutional racism is fought against, the black shape is now shown outside, representing it’s obtainment of freedom. However, the world is presented as inverted, showing either that this is an event that is not occurring in real life but is more of a dream because the conflict has not been dealt with yet, or that the shape has indeed gained freedom but it’s struggle is not over because of the racism that it has to deal with from other people instead of institutions, suggesting that a new equilibrium has not yet been reached, subverting the traditional narrative structure. The narrative is relevant to the music video because it is a protest song against institutional racism that is present in the USA and the narrative shows the effects of these systems on black people in the USA today. 

Another narrative theory is Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary opposites which posits that narratives are based around binary oppositions because of how they allow for the audience to connect with the story as well as allowing the creator of the story to frame events and justify viewpoints. From this, the dominant ideologies of societies were formed, and narratives can be viewed as either reactionary (supporting or adhering to the dominant ideology) or radical (opposing or questioning the dominant ideology). The music video for the specials’ song “Ghost Town” is a radical narrative that presents a sense of fear for the future of Britain during the 1980’s, a period of unrest and poverty in the country. The music video presents this by showing binary opposites of the reality observable at the time, with empty streets and lonely roads of a usually bustling city showing how the disruption to the equilibrium of life could lead to a far worse new equilibrium of loneliness and doom. 

Vladimir Propp proposed the idea that stories often use similar stock characters like the hero, villain, victim and others to provide familiar narrative structures. This is because stories have evolved from folk tales that often-featured similar characters such as heroes who fought against evil (also incorporating the theory of binary oppositions). These stock characters can be seen in Common’s “Letter to the Free” music video with the minorities portraying the victim, oppressed by the villain of systemic racism and the prison that they are trapped inside. The heroes are presented as the same minority population that also receives aid from the helper, which is people like Common, featured raising awareness of the systemic racism with his music. While Letter to the Free sticks to a traditional storytelling formula by using stock characters, Ghost Town’s music video is more abstract and does not show many characters which makes it harder to apply Propp’s character types and function theory. The villain can be seen as the disruption to the equilibrium that is causing the streets to be emptied and lonely, while the hero is unclear, as the band in the video do not “fight” the villain or attempt to stop it, adding to the uneasiness and fear present in the video and song. 

Narrative structures can also be subverted or altered by a narrative not conforming to the overall structural theories of how stories are constructed. For example, since most films, music videos and TV shows do not play out in real time, elements of the story are taken out, employing elision or ellipsis. This can be seen in Ghost Town, as the band’s entire journey is not displayed, but instead the audience are shown a sort of highlight reel of the band driving through different parts of empty streets and performing to the camera. This is done to cut out segments of time in the video that would consist of the audience waiting in real time. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are similar –they jump backwards or forwards in time to break the linear sequence often before then returning to the main linear narrative. The Letter to the free music video portrays two parallel narratives of both the mysterious black box and common along with others performing music in otherwise empty prison cells which run simultaneous to each other. This alters Freytag’s pyramid, a visual representation of the beginning, middle and end narrative structure by introducing another story that is switched between during the video. This is similar to the film memento, which executes this same parallel narrative structure also. In these cases, instead of Freytag’s pyramid being represented as a pyramid with a low stake start with an inciting incident, a climax in the middle, followed by a denouement that leads to the new equilibrium, it can be represented as a sort of fish hook, with two narratives playing parallel two each other which both lead to the same climax.   

These music video shows that narrative theory can be applied to music videos and that narrative theory is a useful way of analysing music videos in a media context. Music like Letter to the Free and Ghost Town comment on current social and political issues and their videos add narrative to this commentary that allows the audience to further connect to the songs and the messages they convey. For audiences without knowledge of the social and political contexts, the music videos can provide information through their narrative to the audience. Also, narrative theories are useful to apply to any narrative medium to better understand it and it’s context, and music videos are no different, as they often contain narratives that either follow or subvert narrative theories. 

Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE. It’s an approach towards understanding, knowledge, life, being, art, technology, culture, sociology, philosophy, politics and history that is REFERENTIAL – in that it often refers to and often copies other things in order to understand itself.

 As Shuker notes, two points are frequently made about music videos: ‘their preoccupation with visual style, and associated with this, their status as key exemplars of ‘postmodern’ texts.’ (2001:167). Shuker refers Fredric Jameson’s (1984) notion of the ‘metanarrative’ (discussed in more detail below) that ’embody the postmodern condition’ (168). For example, the fragmentary, decentred nature of music videos that break up traditional understandings of time and space so that audiences are ‘no longer able to distinguish ‘fiction’ from ‘reality’, part of the postmodern condition’ (ibid). Alongside their similarity to adverts (essentially the music video is a commercial tool to sell music products) ‘making them part of a blatantly consumerist culture‘ (ibid). And of course, the ‘considerable evidence of pastiche, intertextuality and eclecticism‘

BRICOLAGE is a useful term to apply to postmodernist texts as it ‘involves the rearrangment and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane, 2016:237). Similarly, INTERTEXTUALITY is another useful term to use, as it suggests signs only have meaning in reference to other signs and that meaning is therefore a complex process of decoding/encoding with individuals both taking and creating meaning in the process of reading texts.

the concept that the meaning of a text does not reside in the text, but is produced by the reader in relation not only to the text in question, but also the complex network of texts invoked in the reading process.

‘in a postmodern world, surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture‘ (Strinati: 234)

In 1959, Richard Hoggart (Uses of Literacy) noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘neighborhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘ (1959:46).  Urry goes on to note that ‘because the global population grew during the twentieth century from 2 to 6 billion. Cities, towns, villages and houses all became high-consuming energy centres’ (97). Thus, a characteristic of modern (postmodern?) societies, is the creation, development and concentration of centres of high consumption, with a displacement of both consumption and production that has radically altered the nature of societies and individuals living in them. Postmodern culture is more about consumption and we are more displaced in postmodern culture

Fragmentary consumption = Fragementary identities.

As an example, mobile telephony (both hardware and software) now appears to proliferate and connect every aspect of our lives, and generally does so from the perspective of consumption – consuming images, sounds, stories, messages etc – rather than production. We don’t make mobile phones, mobile networks (hardware) or Apps, content and platforms (software).

 Jean Baudrillard – Implosion

Another way to understand this approach is to reflect on the emergence of, often off-shore, leisure and theme parks which are ‘highly commercialised, with many simulated environments more ‘real’ than the original from which they are copied’ (Urry 2014:81). Illustrating this point with references to ‘newly constructed sites of consumption excess’ (79) Urry highlights Macao described as ‘a laboratory of consumption, as the Chinese learn to be individualised consumers of goods and services being generated on an extraordinary scale’ (81). Or Dubai, which up to 1960 was one of the poorest places on earth and yet by the 2000’s was the number one global site for ostentatious shopping’ and other forms of hyppereal consumption – a domed ski resort, and copies of the ‘real’ more perfect than the originals – the pyramids, Taj Mahal, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a snow mountain etc.

Fredric Jameson claimed that Postmodernism is characterized by pastiche rather than parody which represents a crisis in historicity. Jameson argued that parody implies a moral judgment or a comparison with previous societal norms. Whereas pastiche, such as collage and other forms of juxtaposition, occur without a normative grounding and as such, do not make comment on a specific historical moment. As such, Jameson argues that the postmodern era is characterised by pastiche (not parody) and as such, suffers from a crisis in historicity.

This links to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernism holds an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives‘ (1979:7) those overarching ideas, attitudes, values and beliefs that have held us together in a shared belief, For example, the belief in religion, science, capitalism, communism, revolution, war, peace and so on. Lyotard points out that no one seemed to agree on what, if anything, was real and everyone had their own perspective and story. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.

1. Pastiche: A pastiche is a work that imitates other works in a positive way, such as a homage or inspiration. 
2. Parody: A work that imitates another work with the intent of irony or ridicule.
3. Bricolage: A collection of works that are brought together in the creation of one work.
4. Intertextuality: The connection between different texts and the influence of some texts to other texts. When other texts appear in texts by different people it is an example of intertextuality.
5. Meta-narrative: The loss of a meta-narrative is described as a loss of overarching ideas, attitudes and values. So a meta-narrative is the overarching ideas in society.
6. Hyper-reality: The idea of Baudrillard that our reality is non-existent but hyper-reality exists built on simulations.
7. Simulacrum: Simulations on which our hyper-reality is based – based on representations of familiar things.
8. Consumerist Society: A society that is based on consuming products more than production. In a consumerist society, people are often fragmented and focus on themselves and their own aspirations.
9. Fragmentary Identities: Refers to the idea that in postmodern culture we are disconnected from our local societies and the people within them.
10. Implosion: The idea from Jean Baudrillard in which Society would collapse if we continue to only focus on surface elements.
11. Cultural Appropriation: The use of other cultures by people of different cultures (often more dominant ones) outside their original cultural contexts. This is an example of how dominant cultures often use aspects of disadvantaged cultures without appreciation for those cultures.
12. Reflexivity: The deliberate self-conscious technique of drawing attention to the process of creating something.

Identity and representation looked at through the lens of Empire and Colonialism.

postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’; questioning the notion of a recognised and overarching canon of important cultural texts – book, poems, plays, films etc – much of which is institutionalised into academic syllabi.

ORIENTALISM:

The Link between culture, imperial power & colonialism.

“the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism” – Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii

‘In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West.‘ (Said, 1993: xxi).Orientalism (1978) alongside Culture and Imperialism (1993) are key texts written by the respected academic Edward Said. He asked if ‘imperialism was principally economic‘ and looked to answer that question by highlighting ‘the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience’ (1997:3)

The mode is characterised by ‘the desire to contain the intangibilities of the East within a western lucidity, but this gesture of appropriation only partially conceals the obsessive fear.’ (Suleri, 1987:255)

Similarly, ‘the East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness and so on). At the same time, and paradoxically, the East is seen as a fascinating realm of the exotic, the mystical and the seductive.’ (Barry, 2017:195)

Overall, POSTCOLONIALISM operates a series of signs maintaining the European-Atlantic power over the Orient by creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘. (Said, 1978:238). Or as Paul Gilroy puts it, ‘a civilising mission that had to conceal its own systematic brutality in order to be effective and attractive’ (2004:8)

Edward Said presents the idea that the West and East are shown in duality which builds a systemic worldview that justifies Western power over the East – Culture enforced by those in power influence people’s ideas, often subtly of what non-western people are like. usually the orient is distanced from the west and portrayed as the “other”

Often discussed by contempoary philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. A good way to develop an understanding of this term is in his exploration of the mirror stage of child development, whereby, as we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. Lacan proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror. Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves. This also describes how without representation of people’s identities in media there can be a problem of under representation.

To link this to postcolonialism would be to suggest that the West uses the East / the Orient / the ‘Other’, to identify and construct itself. How it sees itself as the ‘West’ as opposed to . . . in other words, it acts as The Other, a mirror by which a reflection of the self can be measured out and examined.

“all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject” – Louis Althusser (1971:190)

Edward Said wrote about the orient being framed from a western perspective which links to Lacan’s theory by proposing that the West has framed the east through their perspective without representation from the east themselves.

Ideological state apparatus (ISA), is a theoretical concept developed by (Algerian born) French philosopher Louis Althusser which is used to describe the way in which structures of civic society – education, culture, the arts, the family, religion, bureaucracy, administration etc serve to structure the ideological perspectives of society, which in turn form our individual subject identity. According to Althusser, ‘the category of the subject . . . is the category constitutive of all ideology’ (214:188). In other words, we are socially constructed and what socially constructs us is ‘despite its diversity and contradictions . . . the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of ‘the ruling class’,’ (2014:245)

Althusser noted that individuals often believe that they are ‘outside ideology’ and suggested the notion of ‘interpellation‘ as a way to recognise the formation of ideology. In that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way as to recruit subjects among individuals. In other words, the way in which society calls / addresses / hails you is interpellation, which is the way in which your subject identity is formed and which, more often than not, corresponds to the dominant ideology.

In other words, what we have in this section of The Wretched of the Earth is a black man living in France, articulating the way he was constructed as ‘other’ specifically through the way he was hailed, called, perceived and understood i.e. interpellated by other ‘subjects’ of France, who clearly saw him through the lens of Empire – racial stereotyping, derogatory abuse – as acceptable social interaction.

As an early critical thinker of postcolonialism, Frantz Fanon took an active role, proposing the first step required for ‘colonialised’ people to reclaim their own past by finding a voice and an identity. The second, is to begin to erode the colonialist ideology by which that past had been devalued. (Barry, 2017:195). In the chapter ‘On National Culture’ (pp;168-178). Fanon presents three phases of action ‘which traces the work of native writers’:

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’.

‘It is well known that Alhussser drew part of his inspiration from Gramsci’ (Althusser, 2016: xxiv) the way in which class relations and subject is ‘exercised through a whole set of institutions . . . the place where encounters between private individuals occur.’ (ibid)

However, Gramsci suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. In other words, Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others, usually in line with the dominant ideas, the dominant groups and their corresponding dominant interests. In terms of postcolonialism Said, notes how ‘consent is gained and continuously consolidated for the distant rule of native people and territories’ (1993:59).

However, this form of cultural leadership is a process of (cultural) negotiation where consent is gained through persuasion, inculcation and acceptance. Where dominant ideas, attitudes and beliefs (= ideology) are slowly, subtly woven into our very being, so that they become ‘common sense’, a ‘normal’, ‘sensible’, obvious’ way of comprehending and acting in the world.

Paul Gilroy is insistent that ‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’ (2004:13) His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency.

Double Consciousness is the idea that minorities have to embody two identities of their colonisers and the colonised. ‘cross-cultural’ interactions is indeed a characteristic of postcolonial criticism. Often found by foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, as well as by celebrating ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’. A unique position where ‘individuals may simultaneously belong to more than one culture – the coloniser and the colonised’. (2016:198) Even Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.

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

Systemic societal sexism: Sexism that is propagated by systems within society

The President of the United States, talks and thinks about women. This would be known as 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.

Institutional Sexism: Within and perpetuated by institutions in society.

Individual Sexism

According to 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‘

“the camera becomes the mechanism for producing an illusion” – Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema, 1975

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. – In other words, media has a sexual imbalance – the women are presented as exhibitionists, something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ , while the men are there to look and admire.

scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ ie OBJECTIFICATION)

 vouyerism (the sexual pleasure gained in looking)

fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘ – The focus of one particular thing [usually sexual])

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‘- This, she argues, affects how people see themselves. People define themselves through what they see, as argued by Lacan, so women and men can grow to define themselves based on the media presented through the “male gaze”. She also, discusses the position of the audience, categorising them as spectators who project their ‘repressed desire onto the performer‘. ‘Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like‘, thus, he must control the look, and thereby, the narrative. Made possible ‘by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify‘. Rules and conventions of mainstream narrative cinema, that appear to follow ‘according to the principles of the ruling ideology‘. In other words, the dominant look is always hetero, rather than homosexual.

Third wave feminism – “Raunch culture” – 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.

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable 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

Intersectionality:  Judith Butler, among others expressed doubt over the reductionist, essentialist, approach towards the binary oppositions presented in terms of: male/female; feminine/masculine, man/woman. Arguing, that this is too simple and does not account for the internal differences that distinguishes different forms of gender identity, which according to Butler ‘tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes . . . normalising categories of oppressive structures‘

More focus on individual agency in fourth wave feminism – About gender identity and how people present gender as different identities to others.

Jean Kilbourne – from the 2nd wave of feminism, she analysed how adverts sexualise women and reinforce gender roles in society. She claims that advertising

Organizing Time – Time in a story can be linear, non-linear, sequential or non-sequential. A story can be viewed chronologically or non-chronologically.

Space – What mechanism the story uses to organize or disorganize space between events and characters.

Theme – Something that links the events, characters and places.

Narrative – The overall structure

Story – the theme, idea or meaning

Plot – The way in which the story is organised and how the events occur.

Todorov tripartite narrative structure: Beginning, middle and end (or equilibrium, disruption and new equilibrium)

Freytag’s pyramid visualizes this tripartite structure where the inciting incident leads to the climax of the disruption until the resolution that leads to the new equilibrium is reached.

Propp Character types and function – Every story includes stock characters that play a role that is described as a stock function because the actions and aims of certain stock characters are generally the same across different stories He also states that stories have set narrative structures that include:

1. PREPARATION
2. COMPLICATION
3. TRANSFERENCE
4. STRUGGLE
5. RETURN
6. RECOGNITION

Levi-Strauss states that stories are about binary oppositions (good vs. evil, old vs. young, etc.)

Seymour Chatman states that stories are composed of two parts – Kernels, the main parts that if taken out would not work and Satellites, the less important parts of the story that are used for embellishment, but they can be taken out of the story without effecting it.

Music Videos (style models): Key linking word – Loneliness/isolation 

• The narrative is little but shows video of the ocean interspersed with the artist of the music, which emphasises the loneliness and isolation aspect, suggesting the protagonist of the video is stuck in an “ocean” of loneliness. The victim would be the protagonist who is shown as isolated from others as shown also in the video by the fact that no other characters are shown (suggesting that the protagonist is alone). The shots of TV static also suggest that the protagonist’s mind is muddled and confused from loneliness and isolation, showing how it is not natural or is difficult to deal with. 

• Like the previous example, this music video uses the ocean to represent isolation from others. I this video, the protagonist is shown drifting alone onto a desert island, emphasizing loneliness. There are also later scenes of the protagonist reminiscing on his life before being isolated. The protagonist also starts to hallucinate people from his past life being with him showing the isolation’s effects on his mind. The ending of the video also asserts that the island and isolation may not have been real but a metaphor or figment of the protagonist’s imagination. In terms of the tripartite narrative structure, The video starts in medias res with the protagonist in the new equilibrium of the desert island and cutting back to the past disruption to the beginning equilibrium that lead him to end up in the new equilibrium. 

• This video only features one character and shows him alone in dark streets and alleys and even alone a nightclub, which usually has many other people in it. The fact that the character is always alone even in public settings gives more impact to the theme of isolation and loneliness. The protagonist is also shown to be physically hurting and deteriorating, emphasising how he is damaged by his loneliness and it is suggested that he is hurting himself while alone physically and mentally by reflecting on his past actions or the people he may have wronged. While reminiscing is not physically shown in the video, it is implied by the actions of the protagonist and the message of the music. In this sense the video subverts the traditional narrative structure of hero vs. Villain by presenting the villain and victim as the same character, showing how the protagonist is hurting himself for what he is implied to have done. The video also starts with the disruption of the protagonist shown in agony and ends with the new equilibrium of the protagonist shown lying dead because of the isolation and lack of assistance. 

Plan for video narrative:

With my music video I aim to capture a feeling of loneliness as well as reminiscing on better times. To capture the sense of loneliness I will use shots of empty streets and roads to communicate this while the protagonist of the video is seen silently contemplating and reminiscing on life while listening to music. The video will also feature the protagonist wearing headphones to communicate how the character is isolated from other people and to fill the requirement set by the headphone advertiser. This allows me to incorporate the advert into the message of the video. The video will mainly consist of slow zooming shots to instill the sense of loneliness and to show the character isolated in an empty environment. 

Following Todorov’s tripartite narrative structure, my music video will start with the equilibrium of the protagonist listening to the music. The disruption will begin when the protagonist starts reminiscing and it will cut back to some memories they have which are with other people or generally more carefree and happy compared to the lonely situation the protagonist finds themselves in the current moment. Throughout the video the sense of isolation will be emphasised from cuts to the empty streets, sea, and the protagonist alone listening to music. At the end, the protagonist will exit their house in which they have been isolating themselves indicating the start of a new equilibrium, with all the protagonist’s memories left behind in the old equilibrium.  

The hero and victim would be the protagonist who is under threat from the villain, the protagonist’s inner thoughts and memories, since the protagonist is struggling to leave their memories behind and to escape their isolation and loneliness. The binary oppositions the music video’s narrative is structured around are the oppositions between loneliness and social interaction and reminiscing and making new memories. 

• Pastiche – A pastiche is a work that imitates other works in a positive way, such as a homage. 
• Bricolage – A collection of works that are brought together in the creation of one work. 
• Intertextuality – The connection between different texts and the influence of some texts to other texts. 
• Implosion – The sudden collapse of something inwards 
• cultural appropriation – The use of other cultures by people of different cultures (often more dominant ones) outside their original cultural contexts. This is an example of how dominant cultures often use aspects of disadvantaged cultures without appreciation for those cultures. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Song: