Why binary oppositions?
Binary oppositions help us to make sense of our reality. It provides a structure which unifies all things, and helps us to understand what something is through what it is not. It also allows producers to communicate clear messages to the target audience, even in a short space of time.
What binary oppositions are encoded in the video to Riptide?
T block
- Blue skies/night-time
- Interiors/exteriors
- Bright clothes/drab backdrops
- Fire/water
- Summer/winter
- Men/women
- Staying/going
- Relaxed/stressed
- Calm/anxious
- Makeup/no makeup
- Modern/past
- Peace/violence
- Dry/wet
- Left/right
- Safe/unsafe
- Dead/alive
- Good/bad
- Single/couple
- Land/sky
- Light/dark
- Light/dark
- White/black
- Happy/miserable (contrapuntal sound)
- South/North
- Away/towards
- In/out
- Good/evil
- Expectations/reality
- Desaturated/neon
- Youth/age
- Sinister/innocent
- Left/right
- Wet/dry
- Ocean/land
- Life/death
Themes, concepts and ideologies - general discussion
Highly polysemic with a range of possible interpretations
T block
- Themes of obsession, and in particular men being obsessed with women. This is reinforced through the lexis of the lyrics, which encourage an unknown woman to "stay"
- Dishonest relationships and insecurity. "made for the screen". An unequal relationship. A range of hegemonically attractive women are cycled throughout the video
- Themes of stalking and voyeurism: running away shot, looking on to ocean in swimming costume, and looking up at the woman on the balcony. We are positioned consistently in a voyeuristic mode of address
- Themes of fame and celebrity/ The master shot of the 'singer' becomes more and more distorted and dishevelled'. The close up shot is made even more uncomfortable through the mise en scene of her smudged and damaged makeup, and avoided eye contact.
- Torture. Is the woman in the master shot forced to perform the same song over and over again, until she literally dies? The aloe vera plant is symbolic of healing wounds and removing pain! M/S of woman tied to tree. C/u of 'dentist' shot, dragging shot, knife shot...
- Psychosis and psychotic behaviour. Themes of mental illness or a drug overdose? Obsessively neatly packed suitcase, dancing on beach by firelight
- Themes of evil and possession. The ouji board is an intertextual reference to horror movies. Gun, connotative of violence, tarot cards, the setting of the graveyard, gushing blood from neck, which magically dissapears
P block
- The video doesn't mean anything, and is completely open, to allow any audience to come up with any interpretation
- The murder of innocence and youth. Throughout the video, the imagery medicine, for example aloe vera is contrasted with images of death and destruction, for example the image of limp, female hands being dragged into the darkness
- Mortality and we live our lives. Choices are made, for example taking images of women are compared with images of women being killed
- Fear and freedom. Nightmarish imagery is used throughout (dragged away) is compared to images connoting freedom, eg the plane ticket. Is this a video about conquering our fears and living a life free of fear
- Torture and murder of women. Shots of the woman's makeup being smudged seem to suggest humiliation (master shot: main performance shot). Other torture shots include a woman tied to a tree, the hand being stabbed in close up, the dental torture
- For every good in the world, there is bad, there is balance. To harvest aloe vera we must kill a plant, and the tarot cards are equally good and bad
- Black magic and the supernatural. Some bizarre, satanic ritual, a sacrifice
- The representation of women. 'Weak and vulnerable' women are positioned in perilous situations for the pleasure of a heterosexual male audience