Practise Exam
‘Music Videos are a tool that use media language to create representations about artists. Discuss with reference to your two close study products’
Music videos are seen as a promotion or advertisement of the artist. It creates a representation of an artist to market to an audience. This is reinforced through editing, cinematography and mise en scene.
In the music video we have studied recently e.g Letter to the Free we know that the promotion of the artist is to spread the message about the 13th Amendment. The music video represents the artist as an influential speaker who is talking for the black community, and who will have a word on behalf of them. The video Letter to the Free is presented as his contribution to the divisive political and social issues of contemporary America, a sense that he is attempting to draw attention to initiating a new wave of ‘protest music’. Cultivation theory could be applied meaning that the more people understand the meaning of the song, the more people will start fighting against racism. The music video can also represents the lack of emotion the people have - they are faceless. This is against represented through the use of costumes - they are dressed in posh clothing and contrasts the idea about the black population being slaves - they are more than that. In addition we see that there is only natural lighting - from the sun and also the words written on the wall ’No Excessive Sound’ shows that everything is dictated.
In Billie Jean, the video represents the idea of it being derived from life experience Jackson faced in 1981 about a girl who had written to him claiming that he was the father of the child. We see that he gives money to the poor and everything he touches is magic and gets better, we see this when everything is black and white at the start but as soon as he comes in the video everything changes to colour. The video building up to see his face is portraying that he is the false hero. Todorov’s equilibrium theory can be applied here as Michael meets Billie Jean in the city, but at that point we don’t know what the reason is and the paparazzi is showing us clues as the video plays along. Billie Jean changed the music industry by introducing the idea that a single must be accompanied by a high-production video.
Steve Neale theory of genre can also be applied as it invokes another genre of popular culture e.g when he taps at one point in the video - this is shown to be popularised by stars such as Gene Kelly (Singing in the Rain)
No comments:
Post a Comment