MONDAY WORK.

TUESDAY WORK.

QUESTION 1:

• The Father Christmas is fairly crudely constituted (being iconic with low
  motivation) by colour, styling, positioning to offer instant recognition,
  reassurance, benevolence, a warm welcome and a clear focus.
• Here is signification at four levels: reference (denotation), association
  (connotation), myth and ideology.
• The setting suggests an urban, business-oriented, consumerist Christmas.
  There is warmth here but nothing particularly spiritual unless the audience
  identifies a star in the east among the white spots in the sky (which may be
  stars or snow and add either way to the manufactured ‘magic’).
• The words provide anchorage through a tag-line (“when it comes to
  Christmas, there’s no place like…Manchester”).
• This stating of Christmas then sharpens up the snow-covered iconic
  buildings which add relevance and a familiar Christmas aesthetic.
• It also draws focus to the pretty lights which draw attention to what most will
  recognise as a German or continental or merely generic Christmas market.
• There is a semiotic vocabulary for those who want to use it: paradigm,
  syntagm, icon/index/symbol, denotation/connotation/myth/ideology.
  Equally it is appropriate to respond out of the language of composition and
  framing (size of shot, camera angle)

QUESTION 3:

the hybrid identity of this text

• the Protest element which has reference to the sixties but also through
  Maya Angelou (“the caged bird sings for freedom”) to Billie Holiday
  (“southern trees we hung from”)
• the associations of the song and images with Hip Hop and Rap
• there is also a documentary element in both style (cinema verité: black and
  white film, realistic location, element of historical accuracy) and lineage: the
  song and video are both connected with the award-winning documentary
  The 13th (about the 13th amendment)
• if genres are ‘cultural categories’, produced with particular discursive
  practices, then they are not found in texts but are subject to the cultural
  readings of media industries, audiences and historical contexts. The
  discourses here are political, cultural and connected to the moment (eg
  Black Lives Matter)

QUESTION 5:

Briefly explain the ‘hypodermic needle’ theory.

• impact of TV violence
• decline of moral standards
• drug misuse
• consumerism
• impact of texting on literacy.