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.
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.
resistance a political protest:
Key idea: the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined, Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change.
Cultural Hegemony:
Antonio Gramsci: Italian philosopher writing in the 1930s developed this theory.
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.
● The ideologies of the dominant group are expressed and maintained through its economic, political, moral,
and social institutions (like the education system and the media).
● These institutions socialise people into accepting the norms, values and beliefs of the dominant social
group.
● As a result, oppressed groups believe that the social and economic conditions of society are natural and inevitable, rather than created by the dominant group.
Key Concepts:
● Cultural resistance: the use of art/literature to challenge or fight oppressive system or power holders.
● Cultural hegemony: domination or rule maintained through ideological or cultural means. It is usually achieved through social institutions.
● Subcultural theory: Cohen’s subcultural theory assumes that crime is a consequence of the union of young people into so-called subcultures in which deviant values and moral concepts dominate. Subcultural theory became the dominant theory of its time.
Slavery’s still alive, check Amendment 13
Not whips and chains, all subliminal – amendment states that you can still be a slave if you are a criminal even though we don’t see it with whips and chains it is still apparent in society.
We staring in the face of hate again
The same hate they say will make America great again
No consolation prize for the dehumanized- no great version for those that’re dehumanised and treated differently, questioning who the great America is for and wanting it to be elaborated.
Post Colonialism:
-Has a hook or link to empire and colonialism, it occupies the shadow of slavery.
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
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). Or as Paul Gilroy puts it, ‘a civilising mission that had to conceal its own systematic brutality in order to be effective and attractive’ (2004:8)
Post colonialism deconstructs and asks how we are measuring good or bad, post colonialism political thought 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
Orientalism: The idea of stereotyping the middle east in a way they are exaggerated to be something worse so that the west can stay in power. Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world.
Jacques Lacan: “The Other”.
we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. 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.
WE can not explore ourselves and will be constantly misunderstood, we are always looking for assurance.
Linking the two together the Other theory can be used to show how people compare others to us to justify a class and reinforced stereotypes.
