Sadia's Media blog

In the last session, we explored the Antebellum South and slavery. Slavery was finally abolished in North America in 1865, following the collapse of the Confederacy and the American Civil War. However, despite being illegal for a relatively long time, there still exists great discrepancies in the rights and lives of black and white people in America (and many other countries). The act of owning another human being seems bizarre now. So how was it ever justified in the first place? One answer is that it was justified by flawed, racist scientific assumptions. Task - study the above image from  Types of Mankind  (1854), and answer the questions below: What assumptions are made here about black people and white people?  What purpose does this image serve? Consider the sociohistorical context of the time this image was created. What is this image attempting to justify? The assumptions that are made of black and white people have different skull structure. And...

Formation  makes intense use of the concepts of  intertextuality/referential codes  and  bricolage The use of bricolage Key term - intertextuality - Where a media product or text makes reference to another media product or text. Key term  -  Bricolage - Where a media product is constructed with iconography and conventions from many other texts, creating entirely new meanings. Often used when discussing postmodern media products. An example of a media product that uses bricolage as a 'mashup'. For an excellent example of bricolage, check out Quentin Tarantino’s  Kill Bill  (2003)  The producer from Beyonce's Formation music video used the iconography of using the riverside as a shot and filming houses near water although in theirs the houses, cars are flooding. And the beat of the music is using the B.E.A.T technique. Footage such as the road shots were used in Beyonce's music video. This new type of music created opportu...

Context Formation, lead single for the album Lemonade, was released the day before Beyoncé performed at the Super Bowl final in February 2016. The Formation music video, directed by Melina Matsoukas, was released with the song. This music video has won numerous awards including a Clio Award for Innovation and Creative Excellence in a Music Video at the 2016 awards, and has been nominated in the music video category at the 59th Grammy Awards. The video is set against the backdrop of the flooding in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and the associated racial tension in America, and also draws historical parallels with references to racism and slavery. In what ways are the themes of conflict encoded in this video? What media language is used to show conflict?  What are the functions and purposes of this music video? What is it trying to get its audience to  do ? How do you know? What groups are represented in this music video? Are these representations typical or ...

How are women represented in this video?  The dominant ideology that is presented in the video is that women are vulnerable, women are represented as being a stereotypical damsel in distress. Furthermore, through the use of close up shots that capture specifics parts of these women the producer is representing them as something for heterosexual men to look at. This supports Liesbet Van Zoonen's theory of women's body being used as a spectacle for heterosexual male audiences which reinforces patriarchal hegemony. Most of the women in this music video appear to conform to the hegemonical beauty ideals. The close-ups and the mid shots used show women with feminine hands (manicure), women wearing high heels, dresses with floral prints, women with red lipstick and straight blonde hair, sparkly dresses, etc.  The close-up shots of a bold woman act as a binary opposite to the rest of the women in the video, the woman has a feminine face structure however when it comes...

Difference between the two:  the duration, films are 90minutes long whilst music videos are 3minutes  Music videos are adverts for the product whereas, films are the product.  Films have a narrative, music can have them but it isn't essential  Celebrities & Music videos  Key term - celebrity - "The attribution of glamorous or notorious status to somebody in the public sphere" (Rojec, cited in Abercrombie & Longhurst, 2007:54) Task: Watch the video to  Stupid Love  by Lady Gaga. In what ways is she constructed as a  celebrity ? Make reference to shot types, camera angles,  mise en scene , and anything else off the textual analysis toolkit The tracking of the camera constructs Gaga as the celebrity as it follows her everywhere, every move she takes so as the spectator is obvious to us that she is the centre of attention. She is positioned in front of all the dancers reinforces her importance and shows ...

Music Videos are adverts for songs, The music video itself isn't the product but rather its an advert for the product. Although in the UK we call them music videos in other countries they're called promos or even PMVs/PVs.  Convergence is the combination of two previously separate industries. Examples of media industries include films, TV and music. For example to watch something at the cinema you need to go to the cinema and watch it. To watch something gon TV you need to purchase it and then select a channel.  However now all the industries are combined so you can watch a film on ur phone, stream tv or even listen to music, this process is called digital convergence. Digital convergence - the coming together of two separate media industries thanks to digital technology.  The Scopitone and the birth of music videos The Scopitone was a French invention, a kind of video juke-box that combined music and video. Popular in the 1960s, it meant that artists now ...

Facts: adbusters are published 6 times a year the adbusters we're looking at is the 2016 edition  commodity fetishism- obsession with a brand symbolic annihilation- disregarding a race subvert to go against the expectation adbusters media foundation was established in 1989 How do contextual factors shape their production, distribution, circulation and consumption of magazines?  1 - What is the dominant ideological perspective of Adbusters? • What is the ideology/ethos of Adbusters? • How does Adbusters subvert traditional magazine conventions, especially in relation to advertising? • How does the magazine interact with its audience?  to challenge advertising for twenty-odd years now  new magazine aesthetic that can somehow come to grips with the internet crisis that all print magazines are in. […] We’re totally dedicated to staying hard copy and pioneering this new aesthetic We have this culture jammers network, and almost 100,000 people have s...