Music Video – Letter to the Free is a product which possesses cultural and social significance. It will invite comparison with other music videos allowing for an analysis of the contexts in which they are produced and consumed.

Common is an Oscar and Grammy award winning hip/hop rap artist who wrote Letter to the Free as a soundtrack to The 13th which is a documentary.

His output is highly politicised, existing in the context of a variety of social and cultural movements aimed at raising awareness of racism and its effects in US society. For example Black Lives Matter.

• Representation of ethnicity, with focus on how Common is a black man exploring black culture-specific issues.
• Use of specific historical and contemporary experience to construct a political narrative and argument
• How representations invoke discourses and ideologies and position audiences
• Representation of gender within the video and in the context of wider representations of women in the music industry
• Representation of place
• Common as celebrity persona

Postcolonialism

The arguments around postcolonial critical thought ‘constituted a fundamentally important political act’ (MacLoed, 200: 16)

Postcolonial critical thought emerged as a distinct category in the 1990’s, with an aim to undermine the universalist claims that ‘great literature has a timeless and universal significance [which] thereby demotes or disregards cultural, social, regional, and nations differences in experience and outlook’ (Barry, 2017: 194).

postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’;

The Link between culture, imperial power & colonialism….

the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialismEdward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii

‘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.‘ (Said, 1993: xxi)

orientalism

How people with power can change the way the general public view certain things like religions and race.

Jacques Lacan- The “other”

Lacan is a type of philosopher. You never actually see yourself you only ever see a reflection of yourself, so how do you know who you are?

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.  most crucial for postcolonial critical thinking, it is possible to identify a process whereby REPRESENTATIONS of – the East /the Orient / the ‘Other’ – are CONSTRUCTED through the lens of WESTERN COLONIAL POWER

The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.

Edward Said & Jacques Lacan

Said explained that people with power influences the way we thing and Lacan said that we don’t actually know who were are as we’ve only ever seen the reflection of ourselves.

Music Video – Letter to the Free is a product which possesses cultural and social significance. It will invite comparison with other music videos allowing for an analysis of the contexts in which they are produced and consumed.

This is a targeted CSP and needs to be studied with reference to two elements of the Theoretical Framework (Media Language and Media Representation) and all relevant contexts

Common is an Oscar and Grammy award winning hip/hop rap artist who wrote Letter to the Free as a soundtrack to The 13th – a documentary by Ava DuVernay named after the American 13th amendment (the abolition of slavery). His output is highly politicised, existing in the context of a variety of social and cultural movements aimed at raising awareness of racism and its effects in US society (e.g.: Black Lives Matter). The product can also be considered in an economic context through the consideration of if and how music videos make money (through, for example, advertising on YouTube).

Postcolonialism

Overall, this is a topic that concerns IDENTITY and REPRESENTATION. In other words, where does our identity come from? How is our identity formed? How do we understand our own identity and how is our identity represented in the local, national and global media? You can look at another post that looks at identity, representation and the self. But here it is specifically looking at identity and representation through the lens of Empire and Colonialism.

The Shadow of Slavery

Postcolonial critical thought emerged as a distinct category in the 1990’s, with an aim to undermine the universalist claims that ‘great literature has a timeless and universal significance [which] thereby demotes or disregards cultural, social, regional, and nations differences in experience and outlook’ (Barry, 2017: 194). In other words, postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’; questioning the notion of a recognised and overarching canon of important cultural texts – book, poems, plays, films etc – much of which is institutionalised into academic syllabi.

The Link between culture, imperial power & colonialism

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

Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii

Jacques Lacan

The Orient of the ‘Other’

The Idea of Resistance and Political Protest:
● When we first think about political protest, what comes to mind?
○ Attempts to change to laws or legislation
○ Organised political movements
○ Public protests
○ Petitions, marches
● However, we can look at political protest in terms of:
○ Cultural resistance
○ Everyday people
● Why look at cultural resistance?
○ Overt political protest is uncommon. When it occurs, it often results in a backlash.
○ Even if overt political protest does results in changes in legislation, it won’t necessarily change public
opinion.
○ Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change.
Key idea: the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined

• The idea of culture as a site of political struggle for Ghost Town see below)
• The the theory of hegemony – Gramsci

cultural hegemony functions by framing ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate
ideology.

Key Concepts:
● Cultural resistance
● Cultural hegemony
● Subcultural theory

LYRICS- Instead of ‘nigga’ they use the word ‘criminal’

Black bodies being lost in the American dream

Slavery’s still alive, check Amendment 13

Postcolonialism

 Looking at identity and representation through the lens of Empire and Colonialism. ‘The Shadow of Slavery’

Challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’.

Orientalism

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

Edward Said asked if ‘imperialism was principally economic‘ and looked to answer that question by highlighting ‘the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience’. He argues that Orientalism is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’

-Tends to rely on a binary opposition between the West and the East that most of times is misleading and destructive.

Jacques Lacan ‘the other’

He was a psychoanalyst and a philosopher. The idea that we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. He proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror.

Key idea: the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined

The Idea of Resistance and Political Protest

Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change.

Antonio Gramsci: Italian philosopher writing in the 1930s

● Hegemonic: dominant, ruling-class, power-holders
● Hegemonic culture: the dominant culture
● Cultural hegemony: power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means.
● Ideology: worldview – beliefs, assumptions and values

Cultural hegemony functions by framing the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate
ideology.

Subculture; Working-class youth culture

https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/wp-content/uploads/sites/58/2022/01/Music-as-Political-Protest.pdf

“We ain’t seen as human beings with feelings
Will the U.S. ever be us?” = Dehumanizing

“Slavery’s still alive, check Amendment 13” =

“We staring in the face of hate again” = Racism towards black people still hasn’t changed from all those years ago of being treated poorly.

“The caged birds sings for freedom to bring” = Could imply slaves who were caged and wanting to be free again

“Black bodies being lost in the American dream” = Police brutality

US 5% population but 25% of the worlds prisoners

1975 = 3000 prisoners

Today = 2.3 million prisoners

Postcolonialism

concerns IDENTITY and REPRESENTATION. In other words, where does our identity come from? How is our identity formed? How do we understand our own identity and how is our identity represented in the local, national and global media? You can look at another post that looks at identity, representation and the self. But here it is specifically looking at identity and representation through the lens of Empire and Colonialism.

The Shadow of Slavery

Postcolonial critical thought emerged as a distinct category in the 1990’s, with an aim to undermine the universalist claims that ‘great literature has a timeless and universal significance [which] thereby demotes or disregards cultural, social, regional, and nations differences in experience and outlook’ (Barry, 2017: 194). In other words, postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’; questioning the notion of a recognised and overarching canon of important cultural texts – book, poems, plays, films etc – much of which is institutionalised into academic syllabi.

postcolonialism is a way of critically way of looking at culture. A key figure is Edward said. His book is called orientalism.

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

literature, painting, music, poetry, arts are framed the best for the west and the east is the least

Jacques Lacan ‘the other’

search for identity by looking in the mirror or by someone else. The mirror is kind of a media text. You see yourself differently and we know who we are.