Audience Research - Vox Pox Questions

What genres of music are you interested in?
Do you watch music videos? If you do, where do you watch them?
What do or don't you like about music videos?
Do you prefer a performance, concept or narrative based music videos?
After listening to the song, what thoughts came to your mind?
What genre(s) do you think that a music video, of this song, could be identified with?
What music channel would you expect to see a music video of this type?

Audience Research - Questionnaire Results Analysis

Audience Research - Questionnaire

Questionnaire for Music Video

Gender Representations (Feminism, Post Feminism and the Male Gaze)

Gender stereotypes is a controversial, sensitive topic when it comes to the music industry. Stereotypes are usually used to help the audience identify themselves with characters. Men and women are the main stereotypes portrayed in music videos.
Men, in music videos, are shown to have the following qualities:

• dominant
• independent
• womanizers
• rough and tough
• carefree

Women, in music videos, are shown to have the following qualities:

• sex objects
• sexual
• aroused
• dependent on men
• provocative

The representation of women in this way is known as Feminism. It was a movement that started in 1960s where women were completely against these stereotypes and generalisations. Voyeurism is another term that is heard when hearing about Feminism. It supports the fact that women are ill-represented and that erotic pleasure is gained by looking at 'sexual objects'.

A theorist, by the name of Laura Mulvey, believes that women in all industries have the sole purpose of showing their bodies off as sexual objects and that they have a to-be-looked-at-ness quality to them. This is known as the 'male gaze', a theory thought up by Mulvey. She thinks that it is this provocative behaviour that is the centre of the 'gaze'. This is evident in quite a few music videos as we see that in some videos, a male music artist is surrounded by female dancers, wearing revealing clothes.

However Post Feminism (1980s) says otherwise. Post Feminism says that there is no 'male gaze' but in fact a 'female gaze' - females desire the men and that they can be 'as attractive' as they want to be, but maintaining control.

Postmodernism - The Blurring and Breaking of Barriers

Postmodernism began in the 1970s and still continues today. It involves the breaking/blurring of barriers between fiction and reality, genres and style, human and machine and space with time. Rather than using reality, postmodernism has led us into thinking about hyper-reality: a mediated version of reality.

Parody

Work that is used to mock and imitate original work with the intention of generating humour and irony.

Parody made in Toy Story 2 (left) from the film Jurassic Park (right) - "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" with a dinosaur running after a vehicle.

Parody made by Weird Al Yankovic (music video 'Fat' left) of Michael Jackson's 'Bad' (right).

Parody found in Superhero Movie (left) of a shot found in the first Spider-Man movie (right)

Pastiche/Homage

An artistic work in a style that imitates (not mock) that of: another work, artist or period. Very similar to homage. Homage - Respectful imitation

Weird Al Yankovic's 'Bob' (left) imitating Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues (right). Weird Al goes one step further and uses palindromes.

Bricolage

The mixing of styles and genres

Shawn of the Dead is a mix between horror and romantic comedy (rom com).

Intertextuality is often associated with postmodernism. Intertextuality is when a text is shaped using other existing ones, often allowing readers to relate to the other texts involved.

Modernism - Reinventing Culture

Modernism was a movement that began in 1890s and ended in the 1960s. It was something that opposed realism, something that reinvented culture that had become old and outdated. Surrealism and avant garde (opposite of status quo, pushing traditional boundaries) were part of the Modernism movement.

The French artist, Pablo Picasso, also followed Modernism through his work. Below are some examples of Modernistic work he created:

Narrative Theories - Levi-Strauss/Propp/Todorov

Claude Levi-Strauss
Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist/ethnologist who believed that narratives involved conflict of binary opposites. He believed them as themes rather than events:

• Good vs Evil
• Man vs Machine
• Hero vs Villain
• Truth vs Lies

Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Propp was a Russian scholar who used to look at Russian folk tales and thought of a theory that they can be compared to many aspects of life. He thought that characters and the events in a story are shown as narrative functions - they were necessary for the structure of any story (stock characters):

• The Hero - a character that is out to seek something (quest)
• The Villain - a character who opposes the hero and has to stop him for personal (selfish) gain
• The Donor - a character who gives the hero mythical/magical objects to assist him on the quest
• The Dispatcher - a character who sends the hero on his quest for a particular reason (this reason eventually becomes the backbone of the narrative and is the hero's objective)
• The Princess - a character who gets into/is in trouble, waiting for the hero to rescue her
• The False Hero - a character who tries to shame the hero, making himself look like the hero
• The Princess's Father - a character who rewards the hero for his efforts of saving his daughter

These characters do exist in modern, mainstream Hollywood, particularly in fairytale animated films like Tangled.

Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov was a Bulgarian philosopher who believed that all stories and talks started in a neutral state (equilibrium) which was the disturbed by a chain of events (disruption). The narratives would then end in the resolving of the disruption (resolution).

Equilibrium>Disruption>Resolution