Today's task - analyse and apply semiotic and structuralist theory to the video Riptide, and research the video's intertextual influences
Exam link - close analysis of the set music videos is essential in the exam, and knowledge of intertextual references will help to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding
What is a music video?
You looked at music videos extensively for the last task. You will be identify a music video instantly. But what makes a music video if they're all so very different?
A music video is not a film. This is so very obvious. But what makes a music video it's own, specific media product if both films and music videos are essentially visuals and sound?
Task: draw two columns, and list ALL the differences between music videos and films. Here's one to get you going:
FILM: approximately 90 minutes long
MUSIC VIDEO: approximately three minutes long
Celebrity and the music video
Most music videos focus on the performer as a celebrity.
Key term - celebrity - "The attribution of glamorous or notorious status to somebody in the public sphere" (Rojec, cited in Abercrombie & Longhurst, 2007:54)
Celebrities are clearly different to normal people like you or I (no matter what we may like to think). They wear different clothes, do different things, are frequently glamourous and controversial..
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
If you haven't got the textual analysis toolkit open in a new tab right now, then do it!
Riptide: initial analysis
The video to Riptide is VERY different from a typical pop video. For starters (and here's something you MUST refer to in the exam), the performer is not in it at all! This makes the video highly unconventional
Task: watch the video to Riptide. Keep the video open in another tab. You'll be watching it LOTS!
The first time you watch it, try to switch off your brain and just watch it like a non-media student would.
Task: analyse and make notes on the video to Riptide
Watch it again, all the way through. Make detailed notes to the video under the following headings. Try not to think too much about what the video means (spoilers: it really doesn't mean anything. Or does it?)
- Codes and conventions – performance/narrative/experimental features
- Camera work (framing – shot types, angle, position, movement)
- Editing – beat-matched?
- Elements of continuity/montage
- How does the video interpret the music and/or lyrics?
- Structure/narrative
- Intertextuality
- Sound
- Mise-en-scene – colour, lighting, location, costume/dress, hair/make-up
When you've completed your analysis, with an explicit example or two under EACH of the nine headings listed above, then check out this post, which gives a straightforward initial analysis of the music video, made by media students two years ago.
Extension: context and intertextuality
Key term - intertextuality - Where a media product or text makes reference to another media product or text
While riptide may seem completely confusing and without precedent, it makes sense if we view it instead as a surrealist product
Key term - surrealism - an artistic movement that tries to depict the logic of dreams and the unconscious
If we see Riptide as a surrealist text, then suddenly the dream imagery starts to make more sense. Sigmund Freud suggested that dreams represent our deep and subconscious fears... and desires. Many of the themes in Riptide are commonly reported in dreams, including:
Sex and sexualisation
Teeth and violence
Suddenly jumping from one location to another (technical term: it lacks spacial continuity)An unseen threat
Half remembered scenes from old films
A classic surrealist film, and perhaps the most famous of all, is Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929). Bunuel and his collaborator, the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, attempted to make a film adaptation of a dream Bunuel had where he saw the moon being cut "like a razor blade slicing through an eye".
The film jumps from subconscious desire to desire, and is at once a criticism of religious indoctrination in early 20th century Europe, as well as a compelling exploration of the futility of romance in modern civilisation. Or, frankly, it's a load of cool scenes strung together. It's your call.
You can check out the film on Youtube. Please be warned that the film contains extremely upsetting scenes that saw early viewers fainting in the cinema. The film is rated 15 by the BBFC. If you choose not to watch it, it's absolutely fine.
If you do choose to watch it, think about how Riptide makes reference to surrealist conventions and dream logic it its own structure.