music video: riptide
analysis of the riptide music video
Narrative and iconography In the music video, there isn't a clear narrative throughout. The visuals of the music video gets the meaning from the lyrics. All the visuals are quite literal for example, whenever there is the word 'dark' there would be a shot of a dark place, or if there is mention of the word 'unstuck' there would be a shot of something coming unstuck. The only part of the music video where the lyrics and visuals aren't literal, is the shots of the woman singing. Every time her position changes and her image changes also. To an extent you can say there is a slight narrative within the music video.
Representation
In the video riptide, we see many different representations. One of them being gender. Women in the video are shown more however they are seen to be more objectified and victimised in some way. For example, one of the first shots we see is women being tortured in a dentist chair. When there is a camera shot of a woman, the camera angles are usually high and there is also terrified facial expressions. Alongside this there is very lowkey lighting which can represent women as fearful. The women are represerented in a way which is slightly stereotypical, however, it can often make audiences uncomfortable which encourages us to see victimisation of women as undesirable. There is a continuos shot of a woman singing, which at the start is a very positive representation on her. She looks very glamorous at the beginning and has the spotlight on her also which makes the woman seem important. The choice to cut back and forth between the woman singing not only shows the change she is going through, seeing as her makeup deteriorates, however it creates a sense of enigma and empthasies the fact women are often victims of violence and control. The shots of the woman singing are done in long takes, which gives us time to analyse and look at what is going on. These long takes are hard to look away from and often makes viewers force themselves to ask why its happening and what's going on. The quicker scenes where woman are being tortured or victimised as itself shows that women perhaps can be more scared as to what is going on. However, not all women are being represented as being tortured or victimised. In the one scene where a woman is stuck round a tree, she does end up escaping meaning it could create a hero aspect to the video showing inependance within women. Aswell as being victimised in the music video, women are also being hugely objectified as well. There is a lot of closeups of women bodies and women facing away which could dehumanise them to an extent. There is also a low angle shot from behind a bush which could create a voyeristic view of women, as if they are being watched. Overall, this music video could be quite difficult for feminist theories to decide if this video is supporting women or just using women for male pleasure.
Postmodernism Postmodernism media rejects the idea that any media product or text is greater value from another. It shows a distinction between media and reality and plays on this idea of representation. Post modernism is said to reflect the modern societys view on uncertainties concerning identity, history, progress and others. This music video shows and reflects this idea of post modernism in many ways. For example, the woman throughout the video who changes due to victimisation, shows exgerrating hyperreality. The intertexuality in this music video also plays a certain role where there is different ideas and things shown which can also been shown in other media text. For example, the cut to a scene of a cowboy running could be used as a reference from a Hollywood film. There is also paradigmatic feature of the horror film suspira featured in the music video. The colour scheme, soundtrack and violent male antagonist reflect this along side more noticeable things such as the knives, gloved hands and barbed wire.
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