Music Videos: Set Texts

What is a music video?

Convergence- coming together of two previously different industries

Synergy- the benefits of convergence, or when two things work really well together

Jean Baudrillard- theories surrounding post-modernism

"In a world with more and more information, there is less and less meaning"

Advances in technology, for example through digitally convergent media such as the internet means that people today have far more access to information than the previous generation. However, with the more information we consume, the more confused we get. Social media has eroded meaning, as information shifts rapidly and can be reshaped and contorted.

There is no such thing as reality - everything we see and hear and consume is a reconstruction. It is not technically 'real'; it exists to sell something. Furthermore, everybody has their own unique view of reality. Media products have polysemy, which raises a complex issue. How can all interpretations be equally valid.

Representations are more real than the thing they are representing (this is called hyperreality).

We live in a simulation - the simulation hypothesis suggests nothing is real and we actually exist (?) within an advanced simulation or approximation of reality.

The world is a confusing, strange and unpleasant place that we have no hope of comprehending. Therefore there is no point in trying to make sense of the world, and accepting a worldview where nothing means anything is preferable.

Postmodernism:

• a distrust in society
• the confusion of living in a world with no meaning
• the experience of growing up in a world bombarded with different messages
• retreating into media to escape the world

Nihilism- an ideology that believes in nothing, where nothing matters and there is no point. Postmodernism is broadly along the same lines but is a lot more playful

Abjection - the process of cutting something off and casting it aside

What does Riptide mean?

• confusing and highly complicated music video that offers a range of polysemic interpretations to the target audience
• a straightforward and completely to the point visual representation of the lyrics of the song. This is accomplished in a variety of ways
• the lyric 'riptide' features a shot of stormy waters, the word 'dentist' features a shot of a woman at the dentist (...), and the hegemonically attractive woman undressing with the lyric 'pretty girls'
• however, the video subverts expectations by providing a contrapuntal juxtaposition between the jaunty music and the creepy visuals
• the video is about kidnapping, torture, murder and abuse. These themes are constructed through the colour red which functions as a semiotic code for death, the fast paced and manic editing, and increasingly broken subtitles, that anchor the themes of degradation and destruction of perfection
• the narrative, such as it is, seems to focus on the mise en scene of women being tied up, escaping, running and being captured
• a binary opposition is constructed between light-hearted perfected and creepy, abject horror
• the video focuses on the representation of hegemonically attractive women. All with blonde hair, hourglass figure, etc and the anchorage of the references in the lyrics to 'Michelle Pfiffer'. The women's bodies are reminiscent of 'beach babes' - a particular hegemonic stereotype of beauty which is often seen in music videos
• the music video therefore captures a particular aesthetic. It constructs the ideologically 'perfect' representation of women as imagined by the producer. It could be a criticism of the stereotypical representation of women
• the mise en scene of tarot cards, pendulums, graveyards and so on, making explicit reference to witchcraft and the supernatural

Contrapuntal sound - where the sound deliberately doesn't match up with the image of a media product