Advanced media session 3: applying postmodern theory to a music video

Postmodernism - a series of theoretical frameworks that are characterised by the deliberate breaking of rules and a criticism of the framework of society. It's a deliberately difficult theoretical concept, but from our perspective, anything which deliberately challenges convention can be described as being.

This is a short and highly debatable list of postmodern-y themes, mainly cribbed from a mark scheme for a past paper question. Do NOT mention all of these in the exam. In fact, mention very few! 

• self - reflexivity - where a media product makes reference to itself
• bricolage - combination of different media forms
• hybridity - mixing of genres
• parody - deliberately poking fun 
• irony - a deliberately contradictory mode of address, eg smoking in front of a no smoking sign. Edgy!!
• intertextuality - when a media product makes reference to another
• hyperreality - where a representation is better than reality
• simulacra - a representation of something that has never existed 
• the collapse of metanarratives - big 'story' that helps us to lead out lives

So how can we apply this to a music video?

Lemonhead - Tyler, The Creator

• Close up, slowly transitions to a long shot through a slow zoom, shows Tyler on the MES of a yacht set against the setting of the desert. This highly unlikely combination creates a hugely confusing binary opposition for the target audience. These two objects do not belong with each other, and the video completely lacks a conventional narrative or even a conventional ideology. This dream like fantasy creates a hyperreal expectation that the audience can never realise, which constructs a highly postmodern mode of address. 
• The highly atypical use of a long take is completely unconventional for a music video. The final shot focuses on the artist looking forwards, backwards, and then back towards the camera in a manner creates a highly confusing and discomforting mode of address for the target audience. This use of parody deliberately makes fun of the conventions of music videos, and may highly appeal to the artist's young and educated target audience.
• The use of loud pastel colours is further anchored through the highly desaturated use of colour. Rather than looking like a modern rap video, LEMONHEAD bizarrely looks like a classic Technicolor Hollywood film. This is a classical example of the postmodern technique of bricolage where one media product uses a variety of different forms
• While the video to Lemonhead is clearly confusing, it also uses several conventional elements of the rap genre, for example the CU of the artist's grills and the high angled shot of the various classic cars. However, there are also a number of subversive elements. Despite being a rap video, the artist subverts many of the conventions of black masculinity that are associated with the genre. Dressed in a pink golf outfit, a binary opposition is constructed between stereotypical conventions of the rap genre, and the almost feminine presentation of the artist.