Compare how media language constructs representations in the trailer to series three of Top Boy and the video to Formation by Beyoncé

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 Compare how media language constructs representations in the trailer to series three of Top Boy and the video to Formation by Beyoncé



 

Plan:

Paul Gilroy - Postcolonialism theory ->
MES Top Boy: Puffer jackets and hoodies -> symbolic stereotype of the hoodie being worn by troublemakers. 
urban concrete cityscape setting, bin fire, dull grey colours -> represent London as a source of poverty, and potentially relatable to the target audience.
'Everybody wants to be a top man.' ->  represents life for working-class black men as a ladder of power.
Bricolage: a mixture of different styles in Formation -> Juxtaposed with the binary stereotypical representation of young black people in Top Boy trailer.
Formation constructs a music video primarily featuring a target audience of Black women, whilst Top Boy with black men. Though both hold secondary attention to the other, vice-versa.
Formation subverts racist stereotypes -> Antebellum dress

How representations make claims about reality
Top Boy - Represents London as a crime-riddled, unsafe place to live. Through the gang violence sequence and the binary opposition of the masked grouping beating a man to the woman protecting her child in primary school clothing.

The role of stereotypes (positive and negative)
Beyonce Formation video -> MES of Antebellum setting and dresses-> Reappropriation of stereotypical slave owners wives/  daughters attire for the sake of black empowerment. 
Top Boy -> narrative of gang violence in tandem to Black British casting -> exaggerates and reinforces the negative stereotype of young black people in England as criminals, for the sake of entertainment. 
The police ->
How representations may position audiences
The positive representations of various different African-Americans within Formation position those audiences to feel prideful in their culture and ethnicity. 
Within Formation, the audience is given a thesis on why to align with the black community, as opposed to the police force. Emphasised by the master shot of Beyonce performing in mundane 1970s housewife attire in binary opposition to her usual extravagant attire. Hinting to the severity of the message within the song, whilst stood top upon a gradually sinking police car, symbolic of police failure to aid the citizens of New Orleans in a prior flooding crisis, reinforced by the high angle shot as she sinks with it to the waters, emphasising her helplessness to stop them on her own, and by extension, a visual expression of the drowning Black community.  

Mise-En-Scene: tracking shot of police car driving, paired with the diegetic sound of it's siren before the camera halts to show a pair of hidden young black men likewise to Formation, positions the audience with the black community, and constructs them equally as helpless to law enforcement, who are constructed as antagonists in both texts. 

DAC: Representations are the ways in which a producer constructs types of people or groups through media language. Both the trailer for Top Boy and the music video for Formation construct largely stereotypical representations of working-class Black people. Though both are products produced for profit. Though the latter holds a deeper subtext of social commentary. 


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