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.

Common:

Lonnie Rashid Lynn, known by his stage name Common, is an American rapper and actor. He debuted in 1992 with the album Can I Borrow a Dollar?, and gained critical acclaim with his 1994 album Resurrection. He maintained an underground following into the late 1990s.

Lynn began rapping in the late 1980s, while a student at Luther High School South in Chicago, when he, along with two of his friends, formed C.D.R., a rap trio that opened for acts such as N.W.A and Big Daddy Kane.

In 1996, Common Sense appeared on the Red Hot Organization’s compilation CD, America Is Dying Slowly (A.I.D.S.), alongside Biz Markie, Wu-Tang Clan, and Fat Joe, among many other prominent hip hop artists. The CD, meant to raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic among African American men, was heralded as “a masterpiece” by The Source magazine. He would later also contribute to the Red Hot Organization’s Fela Kuti tribute album, Red Hot and Riot in 2002. He collaborated with Djelimady Tounkara on a remake of Kuti’s track, “Years of Tears and Sorrow”.

13th amendment

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation’s prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans.

The film explores the “intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States;” it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction.

“The loophole in our constitution’s ban on slavery not only allowed slavery to continue, but launched an era of discrimination and mass incarceration that continues to this day. To live up to our nation’s promise of justice for all, we must eliminate the Slavery Clause from our constitution.”

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

Lamb : The indexical signs in the film poster is of a lamb being held protectively by a women with a dull expression. The title tells us that the film is focused on the lamb. The mise-en-scene shows mountains in an isolated area, the clouds look dull and moody. It gives off spooky/mysterious vibe with the colours and the title which is the same colour as the lambs nose and ears.

Midsommer: The indexical signs in this films is half of a women’s face with a scared / feared emotion she’s wearing a flower crown which is an important prop for the film. The symbolic signals the small text thats written in caps saying “Let the festivals begin” and links in with the films context. The colours aren’t as mysterious like the lamb poster but the women’s face tells us its a horror film.

Black Swan: The indexical sign in this film poster is the face of the main character, her expression towards the camera is quite disturbing and sinister because her eyes are

Joker:

Media forms have different media language and key terminology to understand the rules and the conventions

Camera movements, focus and depth are important for films. Different camera movements in scenes are key

• High angle / Low angle / bulls-eye / birds eye / canted angle
• Tracking / Panning / Craning / Tilting / Hand held / Steadicam
• Establishing Shot / Long Shot / Medium Shot / Close-up / Big Close-Up / Extreme Close Up (students often struggle with the first and the last again issues with SCALE, SIZE & SPACE, so practice is really important)
• Insert Shot

different camera angles add depth to films because it adds more details which is more exciting then having the same camera angle all through the whole film would become boring but using different camera shots like High angle, big close up and panning etc. will and more detail.

Insert shots are used to highlight something important for example if a character is reading something that’s important for the film the camera focuses on those words on the paper to let the viewers who are watching the film

Linear = arranged in or extending a straight or nearly straight line

chronological = following the order in which they occurred

sequential = forming or following in a logical order or sequence

circular structure = an object that references itself.  making sure the function that is being passed in, filters out repeated or circular data.

Time based = over a period of time

narrative arc =  is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, board games, video games, and films with each episode following a dramatic arc.

Freytag’s pyramid = Devised by 19th century German playwright Gustav Freytag, Freytag’s Pyramid is a paradigm of dramatic structure outlining the seven key steps in successful storytelling: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement

Exposition = Narrative exposition is the insertion of background information within a story or narrative. This information can be about the setting, characters’ backstories, prior plot events, historical context.

Inciting incident = The event that sets the main character or characters on the journey that will occupy them throughout the narrative.

Rising action =  starts right after the period of exposition and ends at the climax. Beginning with the inciting incident, rising action is the bulk of the plot. It is composed of a series of events that build on the conflict and increase the tension, sending the story racing to a dramatic climax.

climax = The ending and leading up to the end of the narrative

Falling action = Falling action is what happens near the end of a story after the climax and resolution of the major conflict. falling action is what the characters are doing after the story’s most dramatic part has happened.

Resolution = the ending of the story, happens after the conflict

Denouement = the final part of a play, film, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.

Beginning / middle / end = The plot through out the films

Equilibrium = Everything is balanced at the beginning

Disruption = Changing something over and over again

Transgression = Often disequilibrium is caused by societal / moral / ethical

Peripeteia = a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in reference to fictional narrative. “the peripeteias of the drama”

Anagnorisis = the point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character’s true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances.

Catharsis = is the purification and purgation of emotions through dramatic art, or it may be any extreme emotional state that results in renewal and restoration

The 3 Unities: Action, Time, Place = a tragedy should have one principal action. unity of time:

 Flash-forward / Flash-back: a flash-forward takes a narrative forward in time, a flashback goes back in time, often to before the narrative began.

Foreshadowing = be a warning or indication of a future event.

Ellipsis = the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues.

Pathos =  to persuade an audience by purposely evoking certain emotions to make them feel the way the author wants them to feel.

Empathy = is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference

Diegetic / non-diegetic = In film, diegesis refers to the story world, and the events that occur within it. Thus, non-diegesis are things which occur outside the story-world

Slow motion = A slow movement to add to a tense scene

In media res = the practice of beginning an epic or other narrative by plunging into a crucial situation that is part of a related chain of events.

Metanarrative = in critical theory and particularly in postmodernism is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge

Quest narratives = one of the oldest and surest ways of telling a story.

Seymour chatman

kernels are the important part in films, it is a key moments in the plot/narrative structure if they aren’t in the film then there’s not plot in the film and would become boring

satellites aren’t as important as kernels because it adds fluff and if you take the satellite out of the films then the story won’t change at all. The point of satellites to manipulate time and to add details

Roland Barthes

comes up with 3 different codes:

Proairetic code – action, movement and causation

Hermeneutic 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

Genre is when music or films are made up into diffrent

Genre is essentially around similarities and differences and should be predictable and expected and also unpredictable and unexpected

Genre is very important for companies who make it and for the people who consume it.

“. . . saddled with conventions and stereotypes, formulas and clichés and all of these limitations were codified in specific genres. This was the very foundation of the studio system and audiences love genre pictures . . .”