Research - Theorists

Research- Post, How coursework links to theories

Genre:

Theorist; Goodwin, 3 stages to music video theory:

•       1.  Music videos more often than not tend to include a demonstration of typical genre characteristics.

•       2. There are frequent references to the notion of looking and the voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

•       3. There is a clear relationship between music and visuals.

Our music video follows these typical theory conventions as we have voyeuristic treatment of the female body, and there is a clear relationship between the music and visuals, for example when the song sings ‘I can dance and play the part…’ our artist then is a puppet and is forced to dance.

Narrative:

Props narrative:

•       Propps Narrative theory is that there are ‘multiple central characters.’

Our music video has gone against this idea of multiple characters as we only have one artist. Our video does not have a damsel in distress, or a villain ect.  

Representation:

Angela McRobbie:

•       Even though she accepts the fact that some women in the media are shown in a negative, sexual and 'weaker' role she thinks that it is in fact a good thing.

•       Unlike the general view of females and feminists who feel that the representation of women is wrong she thinks that some representations empower women and show them off as sexually powerful, dominating and clearly better than a lot of men.

Our music video goes with and against this theory, our artist starts off weaker and fragile and towards the end of the video she is stronger and more dominating.

Audience:

Stuart Hall’s preferred reading theory:

This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the music video is encoded (a message/ theme/ representation put in) by the producer, and decoded (a message/ theme/ representation taken out) by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code.

Our music video goes with this theory of encoding and decoding. The message we encoded was that women are objectified in society and looked down upon. And the audience then decode the message that women need to break through the typical conventions.

Media Language:

Carol Vernalis:

•       Carole Vernalis thinks that in a music video there are always similar/ typical aspects a person would expect to see.

•       She states that music video constructions requires narrative, editing, camera and sound aspects which overall encode a strong meaning for the audience.

Our music video follows this theory as our video has a story, has been edited and has a meaning encoded for the audience.