Post colonialism is a massive factor in how the audience views the media. Theorists such as J McDougall and Natalie Fenton look at the link between society and media. J McDougall wrote a book called “Fake News vs New Media” and N.fenton quoted  from the book “I’ve always said you can’t understand the world without the media nor the media without the world”. N.Fenton is suggesting from this quote that the media today is so powerful that it persuades and shapes ideologies. For example the media has shaped what the female and Male stereotype is. It also suggests that the world wouldn’t be as it is today without the media as the media has shaped how the world views things and how the world sees and interprets everything. 

The music videos “Letter to the free” and “Ghost town” both challenge social ideologies and show post colonialism in contrasting ways . Firstly, letter to the free is about speaking up about racism and trying to end the black and white divide in society. In contrast to letter to the free being about trying to create equal rights, Ghost town refers back to the economic depression and the employment rates going up in London which went spiralling out of control. Both these music videos can be seen to be radical because they are challenging social ideologies and are trying to enforce change against discrimination and to fix the economic chrisis. 

Paul Gilroy and W.E.B. du Bois proposed the idea of “Double consciousness” .Double consciousness defining itself as the internal conflict experienced by subordinated or colonized groups in an oppressive society. This links to both the music videos because the setting in Ghost Town is in the UK during the economic crisis, which left people without jobs. Similarly, Letter to the Free is set in an oppressive society in America because black people are experiencing discrimination. The term also referred to Du Bois’s experiences of reconciling his African heritage with an upbringing in a European-dominated society, In his book “Black Atlantic” about a distinct black Atlantic culture. 

Post-colonialism helps us to be able to understand the concept of “the other”. A theorist that explores this is Jacques Lacan who came up with the mirror theory. The mirror theory is the young child’s identification with his own image. In simpler terms, when a child first recognises themselves in a reflection in the mirror, (what Lacan terms the “Ideal-I” or “ideal ego”), a stage that occurs anywhere from 6-18 months of age. However this also means that we never see ourselves as a whole, we simply see a reflection to judge what others would see us as and who we are. This links to Letter to the Free and Ghost Town because everyone has a different interpretation of the music videos, not everyone will view them the same way. By understanding and exploring “the other” we are also understanding and exploring ourselves. 

Furthermore, it is significant that music videos can change cultures and show the struggles they are facing. Louis Althusser talks about the Ideological state apparatus which is used to describe the way society structures itself to a line with its ideologies of identity, and right and wrong. Althusser suggests the way in which a subject’s identity is formed corresponds to the dominant ideology. Similarly, Gramsci came up with the theory of hegemony, which can illustrate how certain culture forms predominate over others, meaning that certain ideas can be more influential than others.

To conclude, it is clear that the idea of post-colonialism can be applied to both Letter to the Free and Ghost Town. The music videos are heavily influenced by racial status, social class and culture. For example, a letter to the free is all about black people’s inequalities which is therefore telling us that the point in the music video is to simply ask for equality amongst all people no matter their race, age, gender or social class. Ghost Town is also trying to get a point across which is to bring awareness to the economic crisis and its severity and the impact it had on people. 

Hegemony is a struggle that emerges from NEGOTIATION and CONSENT – Not total domination (not totalitarianism or explicit propaganda) but a continual exchange of power, through ideas.

Murdoch dynasty controls Tony Blair and therefore the labour party, which links to the 1997 new labour party which was because of Murdoch

Key words:

• Media concentration / Conglomerates / Globalisation (in terms of media ownership)-  is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media. Contemporary research demonstrates increasing levels of consolidation, with many media industries already highly concentrated and dominated by a very small number of firms

• Vertical Integration & Horizontal Integration- Horizontal integration is when a business grows by acquiring a similar company in their industry at the same point of the supply chain. Vertical integration is when a business expands by acquiring another company that operates before or after them in the supply chain

• Gatekeepers- filter and process things and information that comes in and out

• Regulation / Deregulation- Deregulation is when the government reduces or eliminates restrictions on industries, often with the goal of making it easier to do business. It removes a regulation that interferes with firms’ ability to compete, especially overseas.

• Free market vs Monopolies & Mergers-

• Neo-liberalism and the Alt-Right-

• Surveillance / Privacy / Security / GDPR-

Narrative can be an important idea and relevant when thinking about music videos, narrative is about having a clear beginning, middle and end not necessarily having to follow a chronological order much like the film Momento which didn’t have a chronological order but instead consisted of colour and back and white flashbacks. It’s structural approach may suggest music videos should be in a certain order or sequence, for example the music videos “ghost town” and “letter to the free” include a structural approach along with Todorov’s theory. 

Todorov’s narrative theory basically states that most story’s or plot lines follow the same pattern or path. His theory states that all story’s start with a beginning equilibrium followed by a disruption in the middle and then lastly the end having a new equilibrium. ‘Ghost town’ does not traditionally follow Todorov’s theory of a clear start, middle and end. However Ghost town does include kernels which are the essential parts of a story, which cannot be changed without the identity of the  story being changed as well. Satellites are also used and included through the Ghost town, without them the music video would still make sense as they are not essential in it to make sense. The kernels are seen in the music video when the setting is being shown, this is a very important part to the music video because it sets the overall scene of it and without it could change the whole tone and perception of the video. 

Vladimir Propp was a folklorist researcher interested in the relationship between characters and narrative . Propp argued that stories are character driven and that plots develop from the decisions and actions of characters and how they function in a story. He suggested there was 8 character types villain, hero etc. In the video “Letter to the free” Propps theory’s of character types can be seen. The man singing is seen as the victim in the story because of his race aswell as other minorities playing the victim. However unlike Ghost town there are very few narrative structures shown but it has a clear point that they are trying to get across of racial injustice towards the black minorities who are seen in letter to the free to be treated unfairly. 

In conclusion narrative is an important part of a music video because it gives a clear way to analyse and understand the context of the video. In Propps theory it helps the viewer to understand character types and what role they play. And in Todorov’s theory it helps us understand the importance of equilibrium in the beginning the distraction in the middle and a new equilibrium in the end and helps overall in understanding the sequence of a music video. Narrative can also give a better insight to the audience of the context of each music videos as they will understand a bit more about what the video is actually aimed around. 

• postmodernism is a theory about now
• postmodernist culture is referential, it refers to other things and sometimes itself.
•  It is possible to understand postmodernism as a complicated and fragmentary set of inter-relationships, 
• The theory of postmodernism is that is it fragmented
• pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist
• new iteration- new version of previsions expressions
• postmodernism is characterized by surface and their preoccupation with visual style,
• meta-narrative- big story. This movie refers to lack of meta-narrative
• Fragmentary identity construction
• Fragmentary consumption = Fragmentary identities
•  key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.

• When looking at moving image products, it is therefore possible to look for patterns, codes, conventions that share a common features. In other words, narrative theories look at recognisable and familiar structures, that help us to understand both how narratives are constructed and what they might mean.
• narratives are a combination of many individual elements (sound, image, text etc) which are edited (connected) together.
• Narratives are organised around a particular theme and space and are based in an idea of time. So for example, many narratives (Film, TV, Radio) are usually LINEAR and SEQUENTIAL, in that they start at ’00:00′ and run for a set length. This means that they normally have a beginning, middle and end.
• Binary opposition
• Propps character types

Key words:

• Flashback
• Colour- moving back (parallel narrative)
• Black & white- moving forwards (parallel narrative)
• Enigma code- trying to figure out whats going to happen next
• Light & shade

1. Pastiche- is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist
2. Parody-  is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony
3. Bricolage-  the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning  
4. Intertextuality- 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.
5. Metanarrative-  experience, or knowledge, which offers a society legitimation through the anticipated completion of a master idea. 
6. Hyperreality- everything seems more real then it is.
7. Simulacrum-  is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. Simulations are more real than the actual thing
8. Consumerist Society- a society that consuming is the main objective
9. Fragmentary Identities- Is when we construct multiple identities
10. Implosion- Implosion is a process in which objects are destroyed by collapsing on themselves.
11. cultural appropriation- , is the adoption of an element or elements of one culture by members of another culture. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures
12. Reflexivity- In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures.

Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is a way of seeing the world. It is possible to understand postmodernism as a complicated and fragmentary set of inter-relationships, a practice of re imagining, pastiche, bricolage and self-referentiality, 

Intertextuality: surface signs, gestures & play

• 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.’
• 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’ 

Surface and style over substance

If it 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

Richard Hoggart 

• 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
•  Cities, towns, villages and houses all became high-consuming energy centres’

Fragmentary consumption = Fragmentary 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.
•  the transition from substance to style is linked to a transition from production to consumption.
•  another key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.

The loss of a metanarrative

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.

Jean Baudrillard

• 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’
• from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation

Equal justice initiative-

• “A narrative of white supremacy was created”
• Slavery officially ended but actually grew from 40,000 to 435,000
• Slavery didn’t end, it evolved
• Jim Crow laws- no school, cant vote

Paul Gilroy

Theme of Double Consciousness (hybridisation), how can you be both black and British

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

Edward Said

In his book Orientalism, Edward Said, points out that ‘the Orient has helped to define Europe (Or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. . 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. The orient cant represent itself

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.

Orientalism-

• Edward Said, 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
• 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.‘
• 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)
• ‘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 ORIENT AS THE ‘OTHER’

• 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.

Louis Althusser: ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpellation’

• all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject
• Ideological state apparatus (ISA)
• 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’,

Frantz Fanon

• Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique and appears to recognise the ‘mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared‘ when he remembers how he felt when, in France, white strangers pointed out his blackness, his difference, with derogatory phrases such as ‘dirty Nigger!’ or ‘look, a Negro!’ 
• 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. 
• 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

• ‘from America, black voices will take up the hymn with fuller unison. The ‘black world’ will see the light
•  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.
•  hegemony is a struggle that emerges from NEGOTIATION and CONSENT.

Commons letter To The Free

• Q1:How can you apply the concept of Orientalism to Common’s Letter to the Free?
• Q2: Can you apply Fanon’s 3 phase plan of action to this music video?
• Q3: How is the audience called / addressed / hailed (interpellated)? Use examples from both the lyrics and the visual grammar (shot, edit, mise-en-scene) to show how audiences are drawn into a specific subject position / ideological framework?

Ghost Town by The Specials 

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

Syncretism, double consciousness & hybridisation-mechanisms for understanding cross-cultural identities.

• 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.
• As Barry notes the stress on ‘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’.
•  Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.

representation: feminist critical thinking

• structural (organisations)
• textual (individual images, films)
• Radical and reactionary

Toril Moi’s

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

Laura Mulvey – visual pleasure and narrative cinema

• Visual pleasure
• “the woman is seen as image and the man as the bearer of the look”
• The male gaze
• A world ordered by sexual imbalance
• Concept of scopophilia (looking)
• Vouyerism ( sexual pleasure gained in looking)
• Fetishism ( a cut out styled fragment)

Jacques lacan- This mirror moment

• Highlighting the “mirror stage” of child development
• ” A complex process of likeness and difference”

Feminism

• First wave of feminism- suffragettes
• Second wave of feminism- 60s society structured around men
• Third wave of feminism- younger women
• Fourth Wave of feminism- intersectionality, plurality

Raunch Culture

• Is the suxualised 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

Intersectionality- Queer Theory

• Different experiences due to differences of identity