• Oh used to be known as Oh Comely
• Oh is part of a development lifestyle/environmental movements of the early 21st century which re-brand consumerism as an ethical movement
• Representation of femininity reflects on the feminist movement which celebrates authenticity and empowerment
• Oh allows people to try new things, it’s relatable and not about ‘celebrity gossip’
• About 25,000 people read it, average age of readers are 27
• This creates an identity for the brand as they are doing something different and showing how women can have different representations and aren’t just objects
• Oh can have control over the feminism market as they know how to manufacture consent and they portray what the community wants, shows something different
• The Oh magazine is published by Iceberg Press which is an independent media company, this means they will fend for themselves and don’t need other companies to help them with publishing, they wan to stand alone
• Also shows how developments in new technology mean small companies can also use the internet to communicate and target audiences
• Iceberg’s branding includes a commitment to print over other media forms, new strategies are presented for institutional development and creative working practice, as well as suggesting ways that will keep print popular and relevant to date
• The main representations implied by the magazine include gender, primarily femininity but can also be understood in how this affects the representation of men.
• Focuses on creativity and quirkiness
• Focus is on women as artists, entrepreneurs, athletes and female empowerment is a major theme
• Absence of men as a part of the representation of masculinity in Oh, shows how women don’t need men and they can stand alone
• Theories of representation including Hall, Hall is a cultural theorist and political activist
• Oh Comely constructs a lifestyle through its focus on culture and the environment, this analysis would offer the opportunity to question some of the messages and values constructed by the magazine
• Feminist theories which includes Bell Hooks (a feminist theory) and Van Zoonen (feminism and patriarchy theory)
• Zoonen believes the media portray images of stereotypical women and this behaviour reinforces societal views. The media does this as they believe it reflects dominant social values and male producers are influenced by this
• Theories of gender performativity which includes Butler who is an American philosopher and gender theorist

• Media concentration / Conglomerates / Globalisation (in terms of media ownership)

• Media Concentration – Process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media

• Media Conglomerates – A company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as television, radio, publishing, motion pictures, theme parks, or the internet

• Media Globalisation – The phenomenon of expanding multinational corporate media investment, resulting in the emergence of a global oligarchy ( a small group of people having control of a country or organization. ) of first tier corporations, which own and operate a variety of mass media content and distribution technologies including: television, radio, film, music

• Vertical Integration & Horizontal Integration
• Vertical Integration is where companies own or control its suppliers, distributors or retail locations to control its value or supply chain. Benefits companies by allowing them to control process, reduce costs and improve efficiencies.
• Horizontal Integration is the process of a company increasing production of goods or services at the same part of the supply chain. This may be done through internal expansion, acquisition or merger. This process can lead to monopoly if a company captures the vast majority or the market for that product or service.

• Gatekeepers – A person who controls access to something, e:g via a city gate/bouncer, granted access to a category or status. They asses who is in/out

• Regulation / Deregulation

• Regulation – A rule or directive made and maintained by an authority
• Deregulation – The removal of regulations or restrictions, especially in a particular industry

• Free market vs Monopolies & Mergers

• Free market – An economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses

• Monopolies – The exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.

• Mergers – A combination of two things being changed/moved into one, merging of one estate/title in another

• Neo-liberalism and the Alt-Right

• Neo-liberalism – The 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with economic liberalism and free-market capitalism. The term is rarely used by proponents of free-market policies.

• Alt-Right – An ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content

• Surveillance / Privacy / Security / GDPR

• Surveillance – Close observation

• Privacy – A state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people

• Security – The state of being free from danger or threat

• GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation, agreed upon by the European Parliament and Council in April 2016, will replace the Data Protection Directive 95/46/ec in Spring 2018 as the primary law regulating how companies protect EU citizens’ personal data

Media ownership and structure:

• Paul Gilroy could be a related theorist as he talks on the theme of double consciousness, eg in Bombshell everyone thought the CEO of Fox News Roger Ailes was this successful and nice guy but he turned out to be someone no one expected. There’s a hierarchy within the organisation and many women lived in fear due to Roger and his ways (this is because he had the power, he could do what he wanted), in order to be successful and get promotions one had to do something Roger had asked because they wanted/needed that promotion. Manufacturing consent comes into play here (Chomsky)
• Horizontal integration which is where a company can spread their company/business further and spread their ideas further, this means they can reach more people
• Chomsky focused on manufacturing consent, eventually people will believe what they’re reading. Cultivation theory comes into play as well
• With ownership comes power, Media outlets are able to manipulate people in order to get them to see their views or believe something that may not be true

Murdoch Media Empire

• Man can’t make new memories after accident, short-term memory loss
• Flashbacks
• Linear
• Time can change (jump ahead and jump back) this happens in Memento
• Half in colour and half in b & w, b & w showing the future and colour showing present, parallel narrative
• Propp theory – Hero, Villian, Victim etc
• Enigma code (puzzle) something to resolve – Pleasure in trying to find out what will happen next
• Memento is thinking about itself (the film)
• Keeps flipping back and forth but has a linear structure
• Leonard has false memories but can’t make new ones which shows his memories will be false
• Leonard decides to live a lie and search for someone who is already dead
• Todorov – Equilibrium (where we first find out about his disorder) disruption (looking for John G) new equilibrium (Finds out he’s already killed John G and Leonard decides to live in a lie)
• Seymour Chapman – The Kernel is his short-term memory loss, satellites may be Teddy/John G, Natalie, Sammy etc
• Leonard creates an enigma code with him choosing to live a lie and search for ‘John G’

• Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE
• PM allows us to think about what life is like now (Theory about now) Linked to media, digitalisation
• Referential – Refers to and often copies other things in order to understand itself
• Memento is referential
• Memento is complicated but connected together, its fragmentary
• Fragmentary consumption = Fragmentary identities
• Different representations/identities depending on where we are, we weren’t able to present different identities in the past
• A key characteristic of post-modernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies
• Leonard has no real idea on who he is
• Detective story which is predictable and represented in a different way
• New iteration/version of previous expression, nothing new in world but we are just repeating old things in a different way
• Visual ‘treat’ looks good but may not have a meta narrative
• Meta narrative is the big story
• Memento refers to the lack of meta narrative, the film is post modern
• Memento questions memories and what happens if we don’t actually know anything and don’t know what’s true or false
• Post-modern culture is linked to buying things, big companies are prioritised over individuals

How could Memento be classed as a postmodern text?

Look at intertextuality (sampling artistic styles, plot character/conventions from other forms/genres), ‘writerly text’ (Roland Barthes, a text who’s meaning is created through the reader/consumer rather than the producers, no cohesive identity no ‘real you’), no truth in history, fiction/fact depend on each other to a point where they can’t be divided, too many contradictory elements so knowledge may not be the truth

1. Pastiche – A work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist
2. Parody – A work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony
3. Bricolage – A useful term to apply to postmodernist texts as it ‘involves the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane, 2016:237)
4. Inter Textuality – One text is referencing another. 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
5. Meta Narrative – Big/overall thing. A narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling, often by drawing attention to its own artificiality
6. Hyper Reality – The inability to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality
7. Simulacrum – An image or representation of someone or something
8. Consumerist Society – Social and economic order that encourages an acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.
9. Fragmentary Identities – Our experience of having a self and of being a self
10. Implosion – An instance of something collapsing violently inwards/ sudden collapse/failure of an organisation or system
11. Cultural appropriation – The unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.
12. Reflexivity – Examination of one’s own belief, judgments and practices during the research process and how these may have influenced the research

• A kind of philosophy and a way of seeing the world
• We essentially live in a world of copying/imagining, we copy from one another but interpret things in different ways
• We have new expressions of identity/being in today’s society
• We continue to reference ourselves and other things
• We’re a bit fragmented/removed from each other
• ‘Strike a cord with you’
• Expressions are new iterations (versions) of previous expressions of popular culture
• ‘Two points are frequently made about music videos: ‘their preoccupation with visual style’ – Their status as key exemplars of ‘postmodern’ texts.’ (2001:167)
• Shuker refers Fredric Jameson’s (1984) notion of the ‘meta narrative’ that ’embody the postmodern condition’ (168). For example, the fragmentary, decentered nature of music videos
• We find it hard to distinguish fiction from reality
• It’s fragmentary if we are referencing different things
• Essentially music videos are a commercial tool to sell music videos
• If someone enjoys something then they’ll watch/buy it
• Postmodern culture is a deliberate, self-conscious, re-working one that prioritises the idea of the copy
• If it the priority is play, then the emphasis is on the surface
• Focus is superficial/shallow if the main focus is just connecting one product to another
• In a post modern world surfaces/style will become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture
• 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
• You become subservient to the media and what companies want you to buy
• We are potentially more interested in the surface of an object over its inner meaning
• Richard Hoggart noted the shift in modern societies, especially the impact on our ‘neighbourhood lives’
• John Urry comments, this was ‘life centered upon groups of known streets’ where there was ‘relatively little separation of production and consumption‘ (2014:76)
• We don’t make anything anymore and consume a lot more than we used to
• We live in a society where we consume a lot
• Focus on consumption and buying things
• Fragmentary consumption = Fragmentary identities
• 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
• Buying one thing could lead to you buying even more (e.g a good phone can make you buy more)
• Fragmentation of identity is characterised and linked to an increase of consumption and the proliferation of new forms of digital technologies
• A key key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.
• There’s a belief that everything connects in some way or another
• Strinati points out that ‘the distinction between culture and society is being eroded’ (231) and suggests that our sense of reality appears to come from the culture, rather than from society which is then reproduced, represented and relayed through media
• A way of understanding this comes from Baudrillard’s provocative 1991 book ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’, It suggests that not only our experience and understanding of this war a ‘mediated reality’ . He also suggests we live in a world of hyper reality and the simulation is more real than the real thing

• There will always be slavery, it will never completely fade away. People were separated from their families and sold to people in different towns. Slavery is still here today, it’s just more subtle
• 40,00-435,000 (People thought slavery was abolished however there were way more slaves than people thought)
• Links to the 13th amendment (Common’s letter to the free), black people more likely to go to prison for the same crime as a white person committed.
• Jim Crow laws, links to Clttf
• “Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack” — A proposal for a new flag for the UK and other socially engaged art work by Gil Mualem-Doron
• Atlantic slave trade was a highly visible and tangible operation, was accepted in society

• Edward Said – Orientalism, the link between culture, imperial power and colonialism. ‘the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism‘. Link between power and colonialism

• V.G. Kieman – ‘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‘
• ‘The desire to contain the intangibility of the East within a western lucidity, but this gesture of appropriation only partially conceals the obsessive fear.’ (Suleri, 1987:255)
• 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)

• Paul Gilroy – ‘A civilising mission that had to conceal its own systematic brutality in order to be effective and attractive’ (2004:8)
• Paul Gilory – Talks on the theme of double consciousness
• Barry notes about Stress on cross cultural interaction is a needed characteristic of pc. individuals could belong to more than one culture simultaneously
• Paul Gilroy is a British academic, spoke about the ‘black atlantic’ motion striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency

• Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage – ‘The Other’ is a way of exploring ourselves, other people/things and lends itself to media studies. Mirror stage ( we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not )
• Lacan – Mirror theory
• We cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to to understand who we are or who we aren’t

• Louis Althusser: ISA’s ( Ideological state apparatus ) & the notion of ‘Interpolation’ – ‘All ideology hails or interpolates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject’.
• 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
• Althusser – ‘Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way to ‘recruit’ subjects among individuals . . . through the very precise operation that we call interpellation or hailing‘

• Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• Frantz understands ‘mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared‘ (McLeod 2000:20)
• Frantz – ‘From America, black voices will take up the hymn with fuller unison. The ‘black world’ will see the light’
• 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)
• Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
• Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’.

• Gramsci – Hegemonic struggle, the chance to reclaim  “from America, black voices will take up the hymn with fuller unison. The ‘black world’ will see the light ”
• Certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others
• Hegemony is a struggle that emerges from negotiation and consent

• Sycretism, double consciousness and hybridisation – Derived from W.E.B. Dubois
• DC – You think you are safe from police but because you’re black you are watched more and not so safe
• mechansims for understanding cross-cultural identities:
• Barry notes about Stress on cross cultural interaction is a needed characteristic of pc. individuals could belong to more than one culture simultaneously

• Orient couldn’t represent itself, doesn’t have the power to represent itself
• Link between culture and violence
• Media suggests our perception of ourselves and identity becomes clear when you are young
• Ideological state apparatus is a theoretical concept developed by Louis Althusser, 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.
• Interpellation – All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject
• Blackface – White people dress up as black people to entertain people, related to people having fun and enjoying themselves ingrained in American culture, came from fascination but also hatred for some people

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

In analysing music videos, ideas about narrative can be useful as music videos have a story and always have a beginning, middle and end but they don’t need to be linear, and the end can be at the start. There’s always a plot which shows how it’s organised and what’s put together in order to create something whole. There is always some sort of structure which allows for the video to come together and shows that thought has been put into the piece as a whole. Music videos can also be sequential which is the forming/following in a logical order or sequence.

In Common’s letter to the free, in the music video there is a clear black box which has significance to Common himself and represents the black community that isn’t being treated right in society. Chapman’s theory on how a video can be broken down into two different things which includes the main thing which are called Kernels and Satellites which are the less important things but still contribute to something. If a Kernel is taken out then the whole narrative could fall apart because it won’t make sense if it’s taken away. In this case, the black box is the Kernel and is significant because it represents something so important, and has an important message to portray throughout the video.

Furthermore, in the music video ‘Ghost Town’ it’s filmed in a car that’s moving through the city while everyone is inside the car. This creates a scene and narrative as it creates a story of the band moving through the city in a car; the video is also in black and white which could connote simplicity. The video also starts by showing different buildings and empty roads which will help to create imagery and a sense of loneliness/empty space and it’s setting the scene.

Letter to the free and Ghost Town could be considered binary oppositions as they both represent different things and want to portray a different image. This relates to Strauss’ theory on binary opposition. Although they aren’t the same video, they are radical to one another as they aren’t the same and do represent something different. Letter to the free represents how black people are being treated unfairly, and the fact it’s filmed in a prison connotes they feel trapped. However, in Ghost Town, there is a group of people driving around a city in a car, on empty streets. This could show isolation however the group of people are together which shows community.

• Representation in terms of female and looking through the lens of FCT
• Happens at a textual level (films, people etc) and structural level, about society’s groups, companies, communities etc
• Where will people be placed in different situations, radical and reactionary, it’s also about the decisions being made
• Tori Moi’s (1987) – Distinguished between Feminist, Female and Feminine
• Laura Mulvery – wrote an essay on visual pleasure and narrative in 1975. Visual pleasure, signs of visual pleasure, ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look’ ‘pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female’
• Structured around a male ideology. Women are looked at and displayed. Connecting Lacan’s theory/stage to the media
• Scopophilia – Natural pleasure in looking
• Voyeurism – Sexual pleasure gained in looking
• Fetishism – Cutting out a certain part, looking at certain parts
• Jacques Lacan – There’s a moment in child development when they recognise/understand they’re a person, a moment of consciousness. ‘Mirror stage of development’
• Representation of females in real life is portrayed through other things as well such as games, films, music videos
• ‘boys are boys’ and ‘girls are girls’ problematic issues could arise from this as not everyone is the same and ideology has changed over time
• Jhally comments on how music video clips create a dreamworld based around a range of predictable codes/conventions
• Women are objectified a lot in everything in today’s society
• Raunch culture: Ariel Levy thinks Raunch culture is ‘ a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars he conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘ (2006:74).
• ‘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 sexaulity’ Hendry & Stephenson (2018:50)
• 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.
• Judith Butler – Suggests that we have multiple identities that are performed to different people, in different settings
• Bell Hook – Multicultural Intersectionality, cultural criticism and transformation. Advocates media literacy, the need to engage with popular culture to understand class struggle, domination, renegotiation and revolution. Put another, encouraging us all to ‘think critically’ to ‘change our lives’.

• Time, Space and Theme
• Always some sort of narrative structure
• Linear, start at the beginning and follow a linear pattern, from the start to the end
• Sequential
• Stories have a beginning, middle and end but doesn’t need to be linear, the end can be at the start
• plot, how it’s organised and what’s put together to make a whole piece/story
• Music video to start in black and white and finish in colour
• Equilibrium, disruption, new equilibrium – Todorov
• Propp – videos/stories can be broken down into characters: Hero, helper, princess, villain, victim, dispatcher, father, false hero. Spheres of action
• Claude Levi-Strauss – Binary oppositions, need diversity and opposites
• Seymour Chapman – video can be broken down into two different things, main/big thing (kernels), won’t really work if one is taken away. Satellites are the less important thing so it won’t matter if they are taken out
• Disruption in video – main character gets shown that being isolated isn’t a bad thing and you can experience good things while being alone. Images of loneliness/sadness before this disruption
• Exposition, Climax, Denouement, there’s a resolution at the end
• Day to day life often works in binary opposition and not just in stories due to opposites within society
• 31 functions that play a role in organising character and story into a plot can be narrowed down into: (Spheres of Action) Preparation, complication, transference, struggle, return, recognition
• Narratives often structured around binary opposition
• Enigma code (something to resolve, puzzle)
• Light and shade is important in terms of creativity and important for narrative