Representation in Media Texts

Evaluate the ways you have used/challenged simplistic representations in one of the media products you have produced.

There are some different representations which I have tried to apply to my music video when making the video to fit in with the theme of the song and the theme of the video so that the audience can understand what is happening in the video and why. 

The main representation i have used is age.  The artists in my video are both similar to one another as they are the same age and are shown to both be living in the city alone and this incorporates the idea of loneliness which is shown to the audience as the artists are shown as outcasts in their youth where they don’t seem to really have anyone.  They both wear typical clothing of some of the youth today where they are wearing t shirts, trackies, jackets, hoodies and jeans between them.  This allows the audience to see that they are actually just normal teenagers in the clothes that they wear as well as how they look young and their style.  In the part of the video where one of the artists helps a girl pick up her bag after she has dropped it after bumping in to someone we can see that he is a caring person which can be recognised with many young people who are caring for others such as their friends, family, and even strangers who may be in need, so the artist doing this gives a message to the audience that little things like that can make a person better and have a likeability factor which many teenagers today strive for as they may want to be popular or well known amongst their generation for the things they do.  As one of the main themes of the video is being alone in the city, we have had the artist help the girl to show that he is trying to connect with people or just have company from someone even though it could be for a very short time as he himself is lonely and just wants to be taken notice of.

Another representation i have used in my music video is regional identity.  The city itself is urban and has many similar dwellers in it such as the artists and they are shown to be city dwellers out in the big wide world on their own having to look out for themselves and their own lives as no one else is going to as they are separated from the world.  They are rapping and singing about the world they are in and surrounded by which is like an enclosure as they spend almost all of their lives trapped in the city in which they live and that they can’t get out and so they fit the typical city dweller identity as they know it like the back of their hand and go through it and around it day to day looking for a way out and getting by and the lyrics -  ‘me try fi get by, pressure nah ease up no matter how hard me try’, shows that the pressure of trying to get out never gets easier no matter how much they try and so they could potentially spend the rest of their lives stuck there if they don’t try harder to find a way out.

A representation idea that i have challenged in my video is most probably gender.  Both of the artists are male as we know them both and we wanted two people who would be similar to the original artists of ‘Big City Life’ and that they both have good knowledge of hip hop which they do and so we found them to be good for our video.  I would say that they are both shown as typical males from their dress sense, the way they are helpful to others like i mentioned earlier when one of them helps a girl with her bag, as a lot of people i have seen in need when passing by i have seen a man help them which incorporates masculinity in men as they are seen to be strong.

Postmodernism In Scott Pilgrim VS The World

In what ways can Scott Pilgrim be considered Postmodern?

Postmodernism is used in many different types of media, being music, music videos, television shows and films.  There are many films which I have seen which use postmodernism however Scott Pilgrim is very different from all of those.  It can be considered Postmodern in a variety of different ways and the one main way it is Postmodern is the use of Intertextuality which has been put into the film.

There is many uses of intertextuality throughout the whole of ‘Scott Pilgrim VS The World’ which come from many different video games and TV shows which are made blatantly obvious to anyone who watches the film as there would be defiantly one thing which someone will spot in the film which they can say they have seen before somewhere else or will remind them of something they have played or seen.  At the opening of the film we see the Universal logo and soundtrack, however it has been changed to an 8 bit style of music and the graphics of the ‘earth’ on the logo has been reduced and immediately this foreshadows the film to be related to videogames as this use of 8 bit soundtrack has been taken from Mario games.  Whenever we see new characters in the film there appears a little black box stating their name and different little details which is like a character profile you would see in an action game and this gets the audience to see as well as hear who the person is in the film as they would in a video game so that they can get used to who they are and begin to decide whether to like them or not as the film goes on.  In a scene where Scott is urinating we see a ‘pee bar’ pop up in the corner, which begins to go down as he urinates to show him using up his wee, which is something seen in many video games when a ‘power up’ has been collected and then used to let the player know when they have used it all.  When Scott is hitting the first of the evils ex’s in their fight we see in the top corner a hit count which is seen in many fighting games and this has been used as it is a fight scene and it shows the characters as if they are part of a game themselves as well as the ‘VS’ which comes onto the screen when the two characters are about to fight which is an intertextual reference to martial arts fighting games such as ‘Mortal Kombat’.  As the second ex leaves his Winnebago we hear the Universal soundtrack play in the background and this is a reference to the film as it is Universal itself but also because the second ex is a film star and is on a movie set so it is kind of a pastiche to actors as the film producers have had this as the characters ‘entrance music’ so to speak.  Games such as Pokémon and Dragon ball Z are referenced when Scott and Lee are running towards each other as we see the backgrounds of the two characters as like fast moving flashes of light with a base colour between them to show the characters as if they are running amazingly fast and almost at the speed of light to increase the tension of the fight that is about to begin as this is used in a similar way in Pokémon when a battle is going on.  When Knives hears about Scott once dating Envy her face goes into shock and then instantly changes to a shock face emoticon which is a reference to MSN, Facebook and other computer software which enable people to chat with one another.  There is a good use of intertextuality when we see Envy’s boyfriend Todd Ingram who plays Superman in the latest Superman film and in Scott Pilgrim he has ‘Vegan powers’ which enable him to have superhuman powers which is a reference to Superman as well as when the Vegan police come to take away his powers for abusing his Veganality, they point green laser lights at him which are a reference to vegetables and also kryptonite which is also green and is superman’s weakness in the Superman films and so some people find this very amusing as it is like the film features Superman.  There are also intertextual references to comic books in the film where in many of the scenes we see words appear on the screen which kind of speak the sounds we are hearing for example when the door bell rings we see a big ‘Ding Dong’ appear on screen which is in a similar font and style of a comic book, because if you were to pause the film when this appears you can easily see in the shot that the doorbell is being rung and this can be easily understood if it was put into a comic book if someone was to read it.  There is also the use of this in fighting scenes where when Scott is fighting Mathew Perry, we see a big ‘KPOK’ which is used to again describe the sound that is heard which is Scott deflecting Matthew’s punch. 

The film also uses irony at parts for example when ‘The Clash At Demonhead’ are playing their song the lead singers first words are ‘Hello, hello, friend of a friend’ which is ironic as this girl is Scott’s ex girlfriend and she is singing it towards him and so having this song choice is ironic.

In one of the scenes when Scott and Ramona kiss there is a sound played which is a crowd going ‘awe’ which plays homage to any US sitcom where there would be a live audience watching and this scene is romantic for the characters so having the crowd pay in the background is un usual for a film but at the same time understandable for what is going on and is also like a foreshadowing as viewers are now expecting to hear more of a crowd again in the film.  As the scene moves to Wallace’s flat we hear Seinfeld Sitcom music being played which is an iconic US soundtrack and it gets the audience involved as if they were now briefly watching a sitcom from the way in which the movie soundtracks Scott’s actions with audio cues ripped right from the sitcom including the laughter track.

The film uses Bricolage for example when the fight scenes are taking place we see the characters as if they were part of a fighting game and then we have the comic book text put on screen when punches and blows are made which has mixed up both of these so that the audience can feel as if they are both watching a game being played and seeing a comic book.  The whole film itself therefore can be considered Bricolage as almost every scene uses conventions which would not normally go together in a film like comic books and video games in the fighting scenes and also black boxes appearing on screen which are put in after and the characters aren’t meant to see them, detailing what is in a room and who everyone is.

For all of these reasons I feel Scott Pilgrim can be considered Postmodern as there is a lot of intertextual references throughout the whole of the film as well as Bricolage, homage, pastiches and irony and all of these things are part of Postmodernism and many reject Modernism when used in the film.

Music & Postmodernism

Using Summercamp and a band of your choice explain how some artists can be called postmodern

Postmodernism is a rejection of modernism.  It brings into light a variety of different elements and can allow for them to become one.  For example bricolage is part of postmodernism and this is when two seemingly different things are brought together to create a new meaning and this is don’t within music a lot.  Also within postmodernism there is sampling used within music where an artist or artists will take snippets from other songs and use them in their own to emphasise their own work and make it sound better.  A man called Jean-Francois Lyotard was a man who rejected the ‘grand narratives’ which is history, science, religion and politics and postmodern people and artists do not believe in one of the grand narratives as they will take different parts of each of them and bring them together to create new meaning and this is something many people disagree with however postmodern people will agree with it and allow it to happen.  Postmodern artists will also use intertextual references in their own work which is their own adaptation or creation of existing work as it will make the audience remember the piece of work that is being referred to, and can see in what they are watching or listening to, the way it has been used for new meaning.  A lot of songs are remixed which is postmodern and this gives the song new meaning and so the music could be changed and the lyrics kept the same and the audience feel as if they are listening to a completely different song can take in the lyrics in a different way which is a good thing about remixes as they are recreating a song to their advantage to gain more listeners.

Some artists can be called postmodern from the way they do a variety of things within their music.  This includes the way they make the music, their image, the way they perform the music, the music itself, and also the way people see or hear the music. 

A band which I have been studying is Summercamp which is a postmodern band who creates and performs an Indie style of music and can be called postmodern for many things they have done.  First of all the band uses Bricolage where the band has put their own music with the visuals of 1980’s movie clips and make it fit together with the way that they do it even though the song and lyrics may have nothing to do with what is being seen and it is in doing this which creates the ‘Indie’ type genre.  The way they make themselves look as a band from what they wear is a deliberate way to seem naff and uncool however it is in doing this that makes them actually look retro and cool and this makes them ironic with their image.  The band pay homage to 1980’s bands from the inclusion of the 1980’s clips from films and this shows that they have a cultural aspect to their music as they always stick to this style and don’t go off and change it.  The band’s website allows for the audience to become interactive with the band as there is a selection of what seems to be randomly spread out phrases which when clicked on become crossed out to show they are loading and then plays a homemade clip with what looks like is from the 1980’s which reflects their music and repeats over and over until a different phrase is clicked on. As well as this they also have a Twitter page, Facebook page and MySpace which allows audiences and fans to keep up to date with the band.  On the cover of their album ‘Round The Moon’ there is a photo of a girl and a boy from the 1980’s which shows the audience that this is the band (which it isn’t) as it looks like they could be the band however they look nothing like the band (because they are not the band!)because they are from the 1980’s and we are living in 2012 and so it is a hyper reality for what people want the band to look like as from seeing their music videos and seeing that they are clips from 1980’s movies, you would think that the boy and girl on the photo would be the band.  The name of the band itself being Summercamp I think refers to America as many young Americans would go to a summer camp during their summer break and always call it summer camp, where in England very little people call it summer camp, it is usually just something simple like camping or the name of the place they camped like The Forest Of Dean and so the band have brought in even the 1980’s American culture to the name of their band as well.

Another artist who can be called postmodern and that I have studied is Eminem.  Eminem uses Mockery in many of his songs through his ‘Slim Shady’ character whom he created himself and does this in a lot of his songs about anyone, mainly other celebrities, but he himself is not like that in real life, and so this can possibly be a hyper reality as what the audiences is seeing in the videos is this artist being mean and harsh to others and this can possibly get them to think the same, but the truth is outside of the music the artist isn’t even like that.  Eminem samples different artists material in his own songs to emphasise the meaning of his own work and this is done to an advantage as in the song ‘Beautiful’ he samples Queen & Paul Rodgers’ song ‘Reaching Out’ where he uses the first verse from the song and uses it for the intro of his own song.  He does this to set the theme of the song which is about his depression and the lyrics fit in well with his own content.  Eminem is ironic in his work as in his older material he would refer to violence and suicide a the character ‘Slim Shady’ but on a different album he goes back on these claims and blames the parents of his younger listeners for the way they act when they are blaming Eminem for how they act.  The irony shown by this is that he as an artist is seen as a role model by many young people, however in this song he is saying that the parents of the listeners should be the better role models and so he is saying that they are not doing a good enough job as parents when it comes to their children's actions.  Throughout Eminem’s career he has had different styles where he has had his stage name Eminem and his alter ego Slim shady who he uses to mock and abuse other people and artists.  Three of his first albums were named after each of his names being called ‘The Slim Shady LP’, where he is sinister but funny, ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’ where he is dark and angry, and ‘The Eminem Show’ where there is a theme of fame.  On one of his latest albums ‘Recovery’ he raps in one of the songs ‘the last two albums don’t count, Encore i was on drugs, Relapse i was flushing them out’  and this shows he has again changed his style as he was under the influence of drugs on ‘Encore’ and trying to get rid of them on ‘Relapse’.  In many of Eminem’s songs there is an element of audience participation in which he relies on the audience to interpret him in the songs.  He does this by the way he raps his lyrics for example in the song ‘The Way I Am’ the chorus has the lyrics ‘I am whatever you say I am, and if I wasn’t then why would I say I am’.  Having these lyrics is a direct way of getting the audience involved as they are being told that Eminem is anything they think he is which throughout the whole of the song is him being harsh and mean to anyone that is against him. 

In music I have seen that many artists are copying, adapting, referencing, remixing or sampling other artists or other work and this can maybe be seen to be the future of music as nobody is coming up with their own ideas anymore, they are just recreating the past and present however artists who do this still have large audiences listening to them as what they do creates new meaning within a song which many people want t listen out for as it puts the music across in a different way and so it seems new to them even if it is an old song being listened to and this enables music to carry on being used again and again as otherwise the same song would just get boring. 

Jonathan Kramer - PoMo music theory

 

A very interesting aspect of postmodern music theory. This will help you with your next essay.

Media Theorist Jonathan Kramer says "the idea that postmodernism is less a surface style or historical period than an attitude. Kramer goes on to say 16 "characteristics of postmodern music, by which I mean music that is understood in a postmodern manner, or that calls forth postmodern listening strategies, or that provides postmodern listening experiences, or that exhibits postmodern compositional practices."
According to Kramer (Kramer 2002, 16–17), postmodern music":

1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic
3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
4. challenges barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles
5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values
7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)
8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts
9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures
10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music
11. embraces contradictions
12. distrusts binary oppositions
13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities
14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism
15. presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities
16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

Jonathan Donald Kramer (December 7, 1942, Hartford, Connecticut – June 3, 2004, New York City), was a U.S. composer and music theorist.

Active as a music theorist, Kramer published primarily on theories of musical time and postmodernism. At the time of his death he had just completed a book on postmodern music and a cello composition for the American Holocaust Museum.

Exam question - Postmodernism

Discuss why some peopleare not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

There are many different elements which make up what postmodernism is, there isn’t just one definition to sum it up.   It is a movement of media, music, arts and other things in life that we do or see which rejects modernism.  It is the breaking down of boundaries such as genres to allow for the coming together of different things to create new meanings.  This is done in different ways and in media texts it can be done to humiliate the original pieces it has been taken from which would make it a pastiche e.g. in Family Guy’s Blue Harvest we see the coming together of a comedy Television show ‘Family Guy’ being mixed with the first ever Star Wars film ‘A New Hope’ creating a recognisable piece of media for both star wars and family guy fans who would see it and know that star wars wasn’t meant to be funny but it has now been made to look funny through telling the story with the family guy cast and characters.  This however will have people disagreeing with this kind of media with the mixing together of something which they might love, with some comedy show from the states and may cast it aside as rubbish and no good.  These people may not be convinced of the postmodernism being presented through the text as they might feel that things should be kept to their own and not tampered with as star wars was a great success and has been for many years a great classic, but it has now been brought back in the form of comedy and ruined by the family guy producers, and so they would try to ignore this kind of media. 
There is an online game called desert bus which is very postmodern in which you lay it in real time to get a bus from one destination to another in 8 hours for only one point making the game a pointless one and not worth playing.  This is what it was meant for though because games of today are played by many teenagers and adults also, where you can do many different things in different games and get for example 500 points for a kill made, or a race won etc and use these points to buy things with the money made for the game which is not real making it unrealistic, however what desert bus has done is make the game very realistic by having it in real time, ignoring the graphics which are not that great, and giving only one point.  Someone who is not convinced by this kind of postmodern media would think that the game is rubbish and pointless, which it is meant to be anyway, and say to themselves and others ‘why make the game in the first place if it is made to be pointless’ as they could maybe not understand what is trying to be put across to them and so ignore the convention of postmodernism as they either don’t want to know, or just don’t understand.
Postmodernism refers to the grand narratives in life which are religion, science and politics.  All three of these are the paths many people follow individually e.g. someone may believe only in religion and not in science or politics etc, however postmodernism takes little bits of all three of these grand narratives and uses them instead of just one of them.  From these grand narratives many people will not be convinced of postmodern media as it mixes up all three of the narratives where these people will believe in only one and so they will not want to be involved by media that is postmodern as it will be against their beliefs.
In the past e.g. the 1900’s, many people were not able to make things which were identical using just their hands and other tools with the resources available to them and so having skills and talent were very highly praised.  However when mechanisation came into existence people were able to produce identical things e.g. the same chair over and over again using machines in factories etc and therefore talent and skill was no longer something very few people had as now everyone could own the same thing.  This is where postmodernism rejects the idea as it sees the value in mixing different things together from different periods in time e.g. Dan Black’s ‘Symphonies’ where there are intertextual references from films from many different time periods and has put them all together in the video with himself in the frame of each of them.  He has done this with music as well where he has taken different bits of the song from other songs and has done this to show to the audiences that anyone can use references from different things in media and make their own remix as he has done.  It also shows that postmodernists are influenced by things from the past to create new things however they seek to take their influences from the wrong place and therefore many people won’t be convinced by their media remixes/creations.  They will again not like how things from the past have been brought to the future and mixed with other past texts as well as future texts as they may believe it destroys the meaning of the originality in the first place.

Exam Question 1

‘Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers’.  In your own experience, how has your creativity developed using digital technology to complete your coursework productions?

In my experience of producing my media products, my creativity skills have developed using the digital technologies available to me.

When creating my music video I had very little experience using a video camera besides filming things on holidays or with friends, I had never used one in a project for filming particular shots or angles and so I knew it would be challenging.  When it came to filming I was able to look at the angles wanted from the storyboard we had created and was able to apply this to the cameras positioning and have the shot and angle I wanted.  I was able to do this for all of the filming needed and when I had begun I felt as if I was getting better and better at being able to hold the camera correctly to get the right angles and shots we needed.  During the filming of the video there were some shots that I had down on the storyboard which I felt did not feel right on the camera after watching them back and so I would improvise by changing the angle slightly or the zoom on the shot so that it looked better and more significant. 

When it came to the editing of the music video the software we used was called Sony Vegas and it enabled us to do pretty much anything we wanted to the video.  We both had minimal experience of using video editing software, and so using one we had both neither used before made it even more challenging to complete the video.  However we managed to figure out the basics from messing around with it and this set us on our way with editing the video.  I was able to split the clips up and fit them together with the music by working out all of the timings etc. and as we had many shots which could fit in different places I chose the ones which looked best in each place and kept them there which I felt was being creative as I was mixing them all around to look as best as they could.  At the end of putting all of the clips together we tweaked around with the contrast and colour to give it a lonely and slightly dark feel to emphasise the feeling of being alone and trapped in the city, and doing this to the video we felt made it look a whole lot better and less of a home movie feel.

Modernism

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there'.

This quote means that the future is going to constantly have things being done differently, in other words a song from the past can be remixed and listened to differently to give it a completely different meaning e.g. Where is my mind by Pixies which has been used in the movie Fight Club and on a Thompson holiday advert and has been put across to the audeinces very differently in the two.

'If you look to the future and keep one eye on the past you are blind in one eye.  If you keep both eyes on the future and no eyes on the past you are blind in both eyes and god have mercy on you'.

This quote means that the things used today and in the future are influenced, referenced or copied from the past as we have many songs which sample existing songs and also movies which have many of their elements influenced by existing movies.