time – how the progression of time works in the narrative (linear, nonlinear). Beginning, middle, end etc
space – the type of location wherein the music video is in. This usually changes. It is common for music videos to incorporate shots from a different area in space and possibly time
theme – music videos run from a solid theme which normally affects the mood of the video.
linear – the progression of time that follows a strict beginning-middle-end structure. For example, if you have a linear music video, the music video will go beginning-middle-end
sequential – the progression of a story that follows a ‘one after the other’ event sequence
story – the lowdown of what the music video is about
plot – how the story is organised
music video plot
Song idea
How does this follow Todorov’s narrative structure?
postmodernism – 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.
silly
music videos are often very postmodernism
re-imagining – looking at a source and re creating it from your own perspective
new expressions of identity and meaning are actually new iterations of previous expressions of popular culture
It is therefore possible to understand postmodernism as a complicated and fragmentary set of inter-relationships, a practice of re-imagining, pastiche, bricolage and self-referentiality, which may be understood alongside another key expression / concept: intersectionality
intersectionality – small divisions in society (e.g. a white feminist’s experience is going to be different from a black feminist’s)
PARODY v PASTICHE
PARODY
a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony
PASTICHE
is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist (e.g a reference or imitation)
the simpsons very often uses pastiche
parody movies focus on surface signs
A good place to look for illustrations of postmodern culture, in terms of media studies, is the music video. 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‘ (ibid) which is the focus of this next section.
Bricolage – 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).
intertextuality – 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.
if the priority is play then the emphasis is on the surface:
in other words, if the main focus is the idea of just connecting one product to another, then the focus is superficial, shallow, lacking depth, so ‘in a postmodern world, surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture‘ (Strinati: 234). The emphasis of style and surface over substance, means that what something looks like becomes more important than anything else, as opposed to what something might mean, or what it could be used for.
richard hoggart
richard hoggart noticed the shift in modern societies particularly the impact of ‘neighbourhood lives’
locality, until the shift in globalisation causing the world to be populated by ‘consumers’
most of society does not make anything and consumes more than creates
postmodernism is linked to capitalism: with the need to consume put over everything else
consummation is the desire to continue to desire. For example, coke adverts advertise enjoyment which draws consumers in as they want to enjoy
fragmental consumption = fragmental identities
This process of fragmented consumption separating, splitting up and dividing previously homogeneous groups such as, friends, the family, the neighborhood, the local community, the town, the county, the country and importantly, is often linked to the process of fragmented identity construction.
Again think about mobile telephony which is now able to construct multiple possibilities identities, at multiple moments in time and space. Think about the way we construct, our (multiple) digital identities, visable and varying across different digital platforms – work identity, social identity, family identity etc, which is most often not consistent with our analogue (human?) identity – look for example, at your profile pictures?
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).
So in summary, the focus on FRAGMENTATION OF IDENTITY is characterised and linked to an increase of consumption and the proliferation of new forms of digital technologies. In effect, another key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.
The loss of a metanarrative (overall narrative)
A good starting point would be to return to the concepts of PASTICHE and PARODY, as 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.[28]
It can be also characterised as an existence without meaning, as Žižek suggests it is an existence without ‘The Big Other’ , an existentialistt crisis of existence when we realise we are alone (Lacan).
Strinati points out that ‘the distinction between culture and society is being eroded’ (231) and suggests that our sense of reality (the overarching metanarrative) appears to come from the culture (eg the media), rather than from society which is then reproduced, represented and relayed through media communication. In terms of media studies, this marks a juncture from previous conceptions of mass media communication, for example, as a ‘relay system’ – a process which just relays information and events in real time to a mass society, or the conception of the media as a ‘window on the world’ (Strinati:233).
From a societal perspective the ‘real’ seems to be imploding in on itself, a ‘process leading to the collapse of boundaries between the real and simulations’ (Barker & Emma, 2015:242). A process which the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard would describe as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUMnot just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.
Using Todorov’s narrative structure, each music video can be divided and summarised into three parts:
Beginning equilibrium: everything is fine, life is ‘normal’
Disruption: bad thing happens that causes the plot to change. Hero goes on a quest to balance the equilibrium again
New equilibrium: world goes back to ‘normal’, although with some major changes.
Young Rising Sons – High
Beginning equilibrium: there are shots of happy scenes with the main character’s friends for the first 4 seconds before introducing the main disruption
Disruption: 4 seconds in, a man (the main character) is shown drinking alcohol from the bottle for a long while. The scene changes intermittently but at 10 seconds he looks upset and sings “in my heart is an emptiness”. These scenes where the main character is illuminated by red lighting are sandwiched inbetween shots with the main character having fu with friends, wearing sunglasses
New equilibrium: When the chorus says “if this is low i’m looking for high”, suddenly the main character in the red shots starts to smile and jump around. AT the end of the music video, he seems to be happier
Fickle friends – Say No More
Beginning equilibrium: the band is at gatwick airport. they are in the queue to drop off their luggage.
Disruption: the band boards a plane. This counts as a disruption as it causes the ‘plot’ to shift
New equilibrium the band leaves the plane and arrive in new york. Shots are shown of them having fun in their adventure
Goodbye, Goodbye – Tegan and Sara
The music video for this song doesn’t really follow a narrative structure due to the narrative progression being almost the same the whole way through
narrative description: this music video is shot in what seems to be a run-down area of midwest america. Despite the dingy settings, the main character is constantly shown as trying their best. AT 0:19, the characters are shown raising their glasses. This creates a sense of happiness despite their surroundings. The characters are shown to be joking around in the back of a moving trailer, which gives the sense that they are too poor to afford a car with enough seats and are resorting to do something that is illegal and potentially dangerous. However, they aren’t miserable because of this, in fact they are smiling.
The lighting of the shots indicate a run down feel which contradicts the characters and their run down, scruffy appearance
It is safe to consider that the ‘story’ of this music video is that a group of friends are in a bad situation but are sticking together and trying their best to have fun to pull through their problems together and be there for eachother
2:
narrative description: The actual members of the band Fickle Friends are at Gatwick airport booking a flight to New York with Easyjet. They capture pictures and videos of their journey through New York on the way, with them stopping at tourist destinations and capturing moments of these journeys, like a travel journal.
The narrative story doesn’t seem to be fictional, but shows the band members having fun on holiday and being friends.
3:
narrative description: one of the band members takes up the main character here. They appear to be writing an email to someone, supposedly a breakup email. Along the music video, pieces of the lyrics are represented in different forms through each shot. For example, someone writing “goodbye” on a blackboard, then someone writing “goodbye” in a text message
the narrative story seems to be that the main character is breaking up with a friend/lover since they don’t like them at all anymore. The message is conveyed through many different mediums in different shots
the act of one country taking control of another, first by military force/action then by occupying that nation politically, economically, socially and culturally
POST COLONIALISM
post colonialism is a theory that accounts for the social, political and cultural impact of colinialism on people. Post-colonialism discusses the continual representation of nonwhite people in media as ‘uncivilised’ or ‘dangerous’ and that white people/colonialists are their saviours
DIASPORA
people settled far from their homelands
BAME
Black Asian Minority Ethnic
DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS (GILROY)
The internal conflict experienced by subordinated or colonialised groups in an oppressive society
CULTURAL ABSOLUTISM / RACIAL ESSENTIALISM
CULTURAL SYNCRETISM
ORIENTALISM (SAID)
Orientalism is a book by Edward W. Said highlighting yhe idea of “Orientalism” to define the West’s historically patronising definitions of the East
APPROPRIATION
an adoption of one culture by another, often done by members of a dominant culture towards a disadvantaged minority group
CULTURAL HEGEMONY
the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society
THE PUBLIC SPHERE (HABERMAS)
THE ROLE OF PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING IN TERMS OF FAIR REPRESENTATION OF MINORITY GROUPS / INTERESTS
the PSBG creates characters and programs that follow the ideologies of the ruling class, helping to uphold stereotypes and beliefs to the advantage of the ruling class
TASK 1: MAKE SOME GENERAL NOTES ON THIS MEDIA PRODUCTION: NAMES, DATES, NUMBERS, ETC
by a band called the specials
released in june 1981
all three major music magazines of the time awarded ghost town the single of the year for Single of the Year for 1981
TASK 2: WHAT IS THE CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND IN WHICH THIS VIDEO WAS COMMENTING UPON?
ghost town addresses themes of urban decay, deindustrialisation and unemployment. At the time, this was prominent in inner city areas such as London due to the steel and textiles industries being carried overseas due to cheaper labour costs
as well as this, racial tension was growing higher and higher, causing large riots across British counties
thatcherism
TASK 3:MAKE SOME NOTES ON THE WAY IN WHICH THIS MUSIC VIDEOS CREATES AND COMMUNICATES MEANING IE MEDIA LANGUAGE.
