Oh Comely is an independent magazine published by Iceberg Press, a small London publisher which publishes only one other title.

• New technology allows companies to interact with their audience this is very important to smaller companies as they have an easy, free way to advise their product which is useful as they may not have the funds to have a big marketing campaign.
• Niche audience – Having a niche audience means they can tailor their magazine to a certain target group meaning they can make the magazine more enjoyable and will get more repeat customers.
• About 25,000 people read it, average age of readers are 27
• The first issue was published in 2010
• Can be linked to Stuart Hall’s representation theory
• 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
• Main theme of Oh is the empowerment of women and feminism

KEY WORDS

• Media concentration – Ownership is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.
• Conglomerates – A conglomerate is a corporation that is made up of a number of different, sometimes unrelated businesses.
• Globalisation – Globalization, or globalisation, is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide.
• Vertical Integration – the combination in one firm of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate firms.
• Horizontal Integration – Horizontal integration is 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 for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication
• Regulation – Media regulations are rules enforced by the jurisdiction of law. Guidelines for media use differ across the world.
• Deregulation – a process in which a government removes controls and rules about how newspapers, television channels, etc. are owned and controlled
• Free market – The free market is an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control.
• Monopolies – A market structure characterized by a single seller, selling a unique product in the market. In a monopoly market, the seller faces no competition
• Merger – a merger or acquisition in which 2 or. more of the undertakings involved

Dave Hesmondhalgh

David Hesmondhalgh is among a range of academics who critically analyse the relationship between media work and the media industry. In his seminal book, The Culture Industries

A critical reflection that highlights the ‘myth-making’ process surrounding the potential digital future for young creatives, setting up a counter-weight against the desire of so many young people who are perhaps too easily seduced to pursue a career in the creative industries. (Hesmondhalgh)

Rupert Murdoch

Media regulation

An example is Rupert Murdoch trying to own all the news industries in the UK. However, according to UK law Rupert Murdoch was only able to own 39% of sky. This can be linked to Noam Chomsky and factoring consent in relation to getting Tony Blair elected for Prime Minister

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] 

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 is a spoken or written account of connected events; a story. Narrative theory analyses media texts and how they are conveyed or communicated to the audience. 

There are many theories based of narrative or stories one of which is Vladimir Propp’s character theory, this theory identifies the main type of characters used in most narrative media. For example nearly every movie or book follows a main character, this character usually does good deeds or takes actions to benefit others therefore he could be labelled as a hero. Another narrative theory that links to this is the binary opposites theory by Levi-Strauss which suggests that narratives are structed using opposites like heroes vs villains or light vs dark, there are examples for this theory in nearly every action film for example star wars. 

In commons letter to the free you are to link his music video to Vladmir Propp’s character theory as the lyrics to letter to the free mention the 13^th amendment and the new Jim crow these link to the history of black people and how they are victims, also showing how police men or the whole justice system are made out to be heroes as they “protect people” and “uphold peace” but they are just false hero’s. However, I believe that narrative theories don’t apply to letter to the free as they would to a film or a book. This is because letter to the free isn’t a story and looks more at how black people are being incarcerated and is used to change people’s ideals and not be blinded to how other people being treated just because of their colour. 

Postmodernism can be understood as a philosophy that is characterised by concepts such as RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE.

pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist
parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony

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).

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.

Narrative Theory

Structuralism has been very powerful in its influence on narrative theory. Its main virtue is that it is most interested in those things that narratives have in common, rather than in the distinctive characteristics of specific narratives.

STORY is often associated with themes and meaning and can be decoded from all of the different elements that are used, for example, the characters, setting, props and themes etc. Whereas the PLOT is the way in which the story (elements/themes/ideas/meaning) is organised and sequenced.

A really good way to think about NARRATIVE STRUCTURE is to recognise that most stories can be easily broken down into a BEGINNING / MIDDLE / END. The Bulgarian structuralist theorist Tztevan Todorov presents this idea as:

• Equilibrium
• Disruption
• New equilibrium

Vladimir Propp

CHARACTERS FUNCTION TO PROVIDE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE:

1. Hero
2. Helper
3. Princess
4. Villain
5. Victim
6. Dispatcher
7. Father
8. False Hero

Claude Levi-Strauss (Binary Oppositions)

This theory suggests that NARRATIVES (=myths) are STRUCTURED around BINARY OPPOSITIONS eg: good v evil; human v alien; young v old etc etc. As such, it encourages students to understand narrative as a structure of key (oppositional) themes that underpin action and dialogue to develop a set of messages that the audience are able to decode and understand.

Seymour Chatman: Satellites & Kernels

• Kernels: key moments in the plot / narrative structure
• Satellites: embellishments, developments, aesthetics

memento

Plot

• the story is told in reverse, the film shows you the ending before it tells you how he came to the conlusion or the actions he took to get there

So far the film has used a small amount of characters which are involved in the story

• Proairetic code: action, movement, causation.
• Hermenuetic code: reflection, dialogue, character or thematic development.
• Enigma code: the way in which intrigue and ideas are raised – which encourage an audience to want more information.

As such, they employ elision or ellipsis in that some elements are missing. Similarly, time often moves backwards (flashbacks) or forwards (flash forwards) at moments which break the linear sequence.

Time can also run simultaneously, in that it is possible to play-out different narratives at the same time: simultaneous or parallel narratives.

This raises the concept that the audience are then given some information, feelings, ideas or logic that the on-screen actors do not have access to, which is called dramatic irony.

non-sequitur – they are really useful creative elements but not essential to the story.

ORIENTALISM: the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism

the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience – Edward Said

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)

Jacques Lacan – 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

Frantz Fanon mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared

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 – 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

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’. 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’.

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.’
His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black

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.

Laura Mulvey – A good starting point, in terms of key concepts, is to look at 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 a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female.

• vouyerism (the sexual pleasure gained in looking)
• scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ ie OBJECTIFICATION)

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‘.

Narrative are organised around a particular theme, space and are based in an idea of time.

They are usually linear and sequential so they have a beginning middle and end.

Narrative is the overall structure in communication which can be broken down into story and plot.

Story is what is within the narrative ie props or people.

Tztevan Todorov (tripartite narrative structure) Beginning / middle / end, this can also be presented as – equilibrium – disruption – new equilibrium

A video needs a high point of drama known as climax which has an inciting incident to lead up to it, at the end there should be some kind of resolution.

Claude Levi–Strauss (Binary Oppositions) For example having good vs evil as a theme or male vs female.

Vladmir Propp (character types and function) “Stock characters” each film has different characters which different roles for example each film has a hero and a victim, usually portrayed in different ways.

Seymour Chatman : Satelittes & Kernels Kernels – key movements in the plot / narrative structure Satellites – embellishments, development, aesthetics

1. COLONIALISM – the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. 
2. POST COLONIALISM – academic study focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. 
3. DIASPORA – the dispersion or spread of people from their homeland. 
4. BAME – UK slang that refers to minorities (asian, hispanic etc). 
5. DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS (GILROY) – Internal conflict by subordinated groups in an oppressive society. 
6. CULTURAL ABSOLUTISM / RACIAL ESSENTIALISM – a belief in a genetic essence that defines all members in racial categories. 
7. CULTURAL SYNCRETISM – Different cultures merging together to make something new. 
8. ORIENTALISM (SAID) – How we view Arab countries. 
9. APPROPRIATION – When something sacred to someone is sexualised or made fun of (e.g. native indians of america and their culture appropriated for childrens costumes on halloween). 
10. CULTURAL HEGEMONY –In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society
11. THE PUBLIC SPHERE (HABERMAS) – An area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. 
12. THE ROLE OF PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING IN TERMS OF FAIR REPRESENTATION OF MINORITY GROUPS / INTERESTS – These public service broadcasting groups (PBS) are mostly biased when representing ethnic minority groups which can make society adopt stereotypes and misunderstandings of these ethnic minorities. 

Syntagm a linguistic unit consisting of a set of linguistic forms (phonemes, words, or phrases) that are in a sequential relationship to one another.                                                             

A set of signs which work together.

paradigm is a collection of signs around a particular thing paradigm of things in posters are the signs which make up the poster