How can producers use media language to represent Americans?
Better question:
Explore how the representation of America has been constructed in the video to This Is America by Childish Gambino and Formation by Beyonce
This question is a little bit shoddy. But hopefully it gives you a rough indication of which groups may come up in C1A! Additionally this post may ramble a bit. Sorry.
(Point - One way in which producers can use media language to represent Americans is through the use of (editing, intertextuality, cinematography...))
1 - What group is being represented?
2 - The media language that constructs this representation?
3 - How does this representation affect the audience?
4 - How could this representation affect the group being represented?
UNSEEN PRODUCT - music video - Childish Gambino, This Is America
- Editing - Long pauses with no action emphasise the pauses in the sound. Allows audiences to consider the extremity of the situation being discussed
- Cinematography - use of tracking shot emphasises Childish Gambino's status as a celebrity
- Costume - subversive costume suggests laziness, working class stereotype? Highly atypical of celebrity
- Use of black humour creates binary opposition, heightening the importance of the message
- Conventions: Use of establishing shot, loose narrative, choreographed dancing troupes. Reinforces positive stereotypes of black people.
- Sound, music, genre - Gospel introduction uses highly stereotypical positive representation of black people
- CG - Constructs a stereotypical representation of black on black gang violence. CU shot of gurning at camera, confidently swaggering towards the camera, before casually murdering a man with a grey sack tied over his face, symbolic of gang violence
- Reinforces both commonly held stereotypes of black people, and draws attention towards the issue of black on black gun violence
- MES of sack, ropes, chair and gun is a clear intertextual reference to the gangster genre
- Police car functions as a symbolic code, referencing police brutality
- Setting: completely empty and bare aircraft hanger/warehouse/carpark. Symbolic of black people's status as 'other'. Confirms Gilroy's theory that black people are represented lower in hierarchy than white people. Here the warehouse functions by SEGREGATING the black characters from the hegemonically acceptable white ones
- Hair - Loose and messy afro, stereotypically black, and subversive of celebrity status
- For a music video, use of extreme long takes, with only five or six cuts in the entire video. Brings different black stereotypes together, and allows the video to flow from one issue to another
- Lack of cuts force the audience to confront the violence and in turn to view it from a distance, becoming desensitised as the video goes on. Life goes on, and violence is represented as being normal
- Preferred reading: disgusted by violence, and newly aware of a significant issue facing America
- Oppositional reading: might see the video as racist and irresponsible, promoting black stereotypes
- Youth: MES of school uniform. Issue of violence among black teenagers
- Highly unconventional narrative that subverts/ignores Todorov's theory
- Instrumentation: electronic sub bass symbolic of threat and aggression. Sudden genre shift to rap music reinforces representations of violence and aggression