How useful are ideas about narrative in analysing music videos? Refer to the Close Study Products ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Letter To The Free’

Narrative is defined as a spoken or written account of connected events. Narrative theories look at recognisable and familiar structures that help us to understand both how narratives are constructed and what they might mean. Some narratives may be linear and sequential, starting at the beginning with a clear middle and end. Whereas others may have flashbacks, flash forwards or even parallel narratives.  In commons ‘Letter To The Free’ there are two strands running parallel through the video: narrative and performance. The narrative is the story that runs through the video, in this case it is the journey of the black box, and the performance element, when the artist sings to the camera. Roland Barthes identifies five different kinds of semiotic elements that are common to all texts. These five codes are Hermeneutic, Proairetic, Semantic, Symbolic, and Cultural. A hermeneutic code is a mystery within a text that is not immediately answered, in Common’s ‘letter to the free’ the black box is a hermeneutic code, we do not know the exact purpose of it and it is left to our imagination. There are also many cultural codes in this text, a cultural code refers to anything in the text which refers to an external body of knowledge such as scientific, historical, and cultural knowledge. This video and song was produced for the documentary ‘the 13th’ which is about racism, the abolition of slavery and mass incarceration. An example of a cultural code is the lyric ‘shot me with your raygun, now you’re trying to trump me’, this is referring to former and current republican presidents of the USA, Ronald Raegan and Donald Trump. In Ghost town by the specials there are also many cultural codes, the video was produced just after Margret Thatcher was elected as prime minister. Interest rates and taxes were put up which reduced the inflation, this caused one million people to become unemployed between 1980 and 1981. It hit the African-Carribean community the most, the racial tension and the slim chance of landing a job caused many riots in the streets. This is demonstrated in the lyrics of their songs ‘Government leaving the youth on the shelf, This place, is coming like a ghost town’.

‘Oh’ (‘previously called OhComely’) is part of a development in lifestyle and environmental movements of the early twenty first century which re branded consumerism as an ethical movement. Its representation of femininity reflects an aspect of the feminist movement which celebrates authenticity and empowerment. This magazine is produced by a small, independent company, Iceberg Press. They only own one other title, unlike other media companies who usually own multiple (conglomerate). It is not designed to be bought on shelves along with other mainstream magazines , it targets its niche audience online through subscriptions – this is reflected on their cover designs. There are clear echos of Bell Hooks’ (an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist) concepts through out the magazine, which can be seen through the absence of men. Instead the focus is on women as artists, entrepreneurs etc, this is an example of Gerbner’s symbolic annihilation (the absence of representation, or under representation, of some group of people in the media). There is androgynous elements on the front cover including the short hair and lack of make up – the model is not hyper-feminine or oversexualized like they are in other magazines. Gauntletts identity theory can also be applied to this CSP (fluidity, constructed, negotiated and collective) from his 2002 book “Media, Gender and Identity”. 

Journalistic practices:  Noam Chomsky presents his thoughts on how the mass media works against democracy’s best interests in his documentary Manufacturing consent, this relates to the leveson inquiry, a judicial public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal. The Murdoch dynasty was also affected by the inquiry, it was found out that his company was paying the police for information, however nothing came of it. This can also relate to Hesmondhalgh’s theory, he points out that societies with profitable cultural industries tend to be dominated by large companies, have minimal government regulation and significant inequality between rich and poor.

Althusser says that 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’,’ In relation to journalistic practices, they are effected by this ‘ruling class’ and in turn construct our society. For example, Murdoch visited his editor of the sun after writing a report supporting Tony Blair saying he got it all wrong , making him rewrite it supporting the entire labour party and their ideologies as well as Blair.

• Rupert Murdoch has a net worth of $18.2bn USD
• By 2000, Murdoch’s News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries

• Hesmondhalgh discusses the way the cultural industries operate and explores their effect on audiences: “Of one thing there can be no doubt: the media do have influence.”
• He points out that societies with profitable cultural industries (e.g. USA, UK) tend to be dominated by large companies, have minimal government regulation and significant inequality between rich and poor.

Key words:

Media concentration – When the majority of companies in one market are owned by a small number of people/organisations

Conglomerates – a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises

Globalisation – the worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas

Vertical Integration – a strategy whereby a company owns or controls its suppliers, distributors or retail locations to control its value or supply chain.

Horizontal Integration – the process of a company increasing production of goods or services at the same part of the supply chain

Gatekeepers – Gatekeeping is the process through which information is filtered

Regulation / Deregulation – rules that are put in place to prevent companies from getting to big and becoming monopolies 

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. New expressions of identity and being are actually new iterations (versions) 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. 

The difference between a pastiche and parody: A pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist, a parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony

Postcolonialism is the academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial hegemony (Western colonizers controlling the colonized).

Overall, post colonialism 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)

Orientalism is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous. this term was coined by Edward Said in 1978.

the orient as ‘the other’. Jacques Lacan – mirror stage in child development. 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.

Louis Althusser: Ideological state apparatus (ISA) and the notion of interpellation. it is a theoretical concept developed by 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.

Frantz Fanon was a French West Indian psychiatrist and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique, whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism. He has written a book titled The Wretched of the Earth which is a criticism of post colonialism.

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’.

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony. Hegemony is the leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others. 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. 

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 follow this wiki link for more on this point.

systemic societal sexism, institutional sexism, individual sexism – misogyny, patriarchy, sexism

first, second, third and fourth wave of feminism. The first wave was from 1850 through to 1940, it focused on legal issues mainly women’s right to vote. The second wave was post wwII from 1960-1980, the slogan was “The Personal is Political”. It identified women’s cultural and political inequalities and encouraged women to understand how their personal lives reflected sexist power structures. The third wave began in the 1990s, the main focus was women’s rights to do what they want with their own bodies, including birth control and abortion. Fourth-wave feminism is a phase of feminism that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women and the use of internet tools, and is centered on intersectionality.

Laura Mulvey speaks about the ‘male gaze’. By this she means the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. In narrative cinema women are over sexualised and objectified.

scopophilia sexual pleasure derived chiefly from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity; voyeurism.

fetishism – a form of sexual behaviour in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, activity, part of the body, etc.

Jaques Lacan was a french psychologist who focused on child development, particularly the ‘mirror stage’. This is when a young child views themself in a mirror, it is said that this term can also be applied to to the mirroring process that occurs between an audience and the screen

Toril Moi set clear distinctions between these three terms:

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

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

‘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 and Stephenson

intersectionality – the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

time – how is it going to be organised? beginning, middle and end? linear, non-linear, sequential, circular, chronologically?

space- how will each scene/setting fade into the next?

theme – what is the theme of the video?

narrative – overall structure

story – overall theme

plot – how you sequence everything

equilibrium – wakes up , disruption – imagining doing things (parties etc), new equilibrium – wakes up again

Vladimir prop (character types and functions)- stock characters. hero, damsel in distress, princess etc. The stock characters have stock functions

Claude Levi-Strauss (binary oppositions) – one thing that connects groups connect people as they tell similar stories – about binary oppositions

theme – in isolation but imagining having fun outside of it

Seymour Chapman (satellites and kernels) – kernels – if you remove something from a story it will not work. satellites – things that change and do not affect the story eg their favorite color.

start off with water being tipped on phoebe in bed. she looks bored sitting in her room. she looks in her mirror and it goes into a party scene. the scene before last is her jumping into a pool and when she comes up for air she is back in bed again.