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Showing posts from March, 2020

Formation, Beyonce, and representation.

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Types of Mankind  (1854) What assumptions are made here about black people and white people? That blacks and whites are two mutually exclusive races. (which is obviously BS) That blacks are closer to monkeys (animals) as oposed to true humans. What purpose does this image serve? Its very obvious racist piece  made to humiliate it's black audience and to perhaps teach them their place as so to speak given the context of this artwork coming from 1854. It instates a false hierarchy over races. Consider the sociohistorical context of the time this image was created. What is this image attempting to justify? Slavery, and it does this through attempting to visually dehumanise a black man by throwing implication blacks are just a middleground between assumingly the 'better' white human and chimpanzees. - So with them being emphasised as lesser, its justifiable to enslave them.

Formation - context

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The use of bricolage Intertextuality - Where a media product or text makes reference to another media product or text.   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 is a 'mashup'. For an excellent example of bricolage, check out Quentin Tarantino’s  Kill Bill  (2003) What specific elements of iconography did the producers of  Formation  use from  That B.E.A.T ? Throughout the song we hear a secondary voice to Beyonce's of a male rapper, assumingly considering his dialect and so forth a representative of the niche 'bounce' genre of music native to New Orleans. We see the prominent  featuring of a dance, again clearly referrential towards the bounce community, with the anchorage pretty evidently announcing pride to the people of New Orleans and their nuan

Formation - analysis, themes and representation

Formation - analysis, themes and representation. 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. Themes of conflict within the music video:  In what ways are the themes of conflict encoded in this video? What media language is used to show conflict? The sinking police car - It creates evident conflict through the video as we see Beyonce being the cause to a sinking New

Vance Joy - Riptide (Music video analysis)

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Differences between film and music video: M inimum run-time for a music video is 3 minutes . M inimum run-time for a full-length feature film is 90 minutes . M usic videos arent held with the expectation of a fully fledged narrative. F ilm is usually auteur'ed by a director, who isnt likely to star in their own picture, but music videos are often created by an external film maker than the artist of the song itself usually as an advertisement for an album and featuring the artist- but some, more akin to the 'Riptide' music video are more abstract in their structuring. (More akin to a short film than simply a  recorded performance or a promotion.) VANCE JOY - RIPTIDE MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS. Some context about the video... The video, directed by Dimitri Basil and co-directed by Laura Gorun, artistically depicts the song word for word. How are women represented in this video? Women within the video are majorly represented as hegemonically attractive, vario

wo(men)

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Wo(men) magazine pieces: For some brief context, here are three pieces I made within Photoshop during my classes' task to run a simulation of a counter-culture female fashion magazine, and so here are the results, from my part in it anyhow.  I also helped write up an article, but the content didn't end up being used within any of the pieces I was doing but rather one of my peers. 

It's Music video time.

What is this 'Music video' you speak of?: A music video is a short film that integrates a song with imagery, and is produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Music videos are essentially a convergence of the music and video industries (crazy I know), booming in popularity within the 1980s in the form we know them today. Synergy - Where the interconnectedness of media products leads to a result of more a some of it's parts. But Byron, what are the BENEFITS OF SYNERGY?: By using synergy, separate  audiences may be targeted, for example: Men within their 20's during the 1980s were some of the most likely to purchase records but alongside this the least likely to watch television. 

Adbusters - Save The Planet Kill Yourself

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Adbusters - Save The Planet Kill yourself : The lexis of the piece is complex, and makes many inter-textual references throughout it that demand the reader has hefty amount of exterior knowledge to understand the article. (I found myself having to Google many of the acronyms mentioned.) This paired with the direct address of the article trying to put you in the shoes of the mundane scenario it speaks of would belittle the preferred reader and increase their 

350PPM

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                      What is '350 PPM'?: ' The number  350  means climate safety: to preserve a livable planet, scientists tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 400 parts per million to below  350 ppm .' The anchored image of the model upon the first page of the double-page spread is indicative of the fashion industry, with this particular article from Adbusters making reference towards to it in particular for it's heavy amount of Co2 production, with a yearly estimated amount of 1.7 billion tonnes created, for reference, this is more than international flights as well as shipping combined.  The imagery of the article anchors the effect of global warming away from the fashion industry through dividing this unrelatable image of the model and placing them within a black negative space and grungy rectangle-like shape, versus the familiarity of the beggar upon an urban sidewalk, the image of her captured within an