Q1B Genre to Audience links

tbc

Neale argued in his study of cinema genres that audiences bring with them expectations on genre codes and conventions, and that their interaction is central to the construction and definition of genre, an endlessly ongoing process. Katz and Blumler also argued that simply recognising common features is another source of audience pleasure, and motivation to view (and, crucially for the music video, repeatedly re-view) a video. Neale also noted the importance to audiences of "differences in repetition", while Abercrombie noted that audiences gain pleasure from observing manipulations of standard genre conventions. In our video we took the convention of [EX; seen with eg/s of videos] and gave it a distinctly different slant by [EX].

There are other ways in which we can see how Blumler and Katz's work helps illuminate the interplay between audience and producers when it comes to genre. Their best known concept, the uses and gratifications theory, sets out key motivations for audiences to select the media they consume, and its clear that genre encoding is crucial in the context of music video. Identification, one of their 5 categories, was a core consideration in constructing our video, and clearly for professional producers too. [The EX is distinct depending on the genre: rock = everyday, relatable clothing [detail!], low key lighting, de-emphasising glamour while pop/dance is typically the opposite BUT may mix it up to strengthen the brand and audience appeal. This concept can also be applied to your NARRATIVE! Some videos directly represent fans within a video - you all have viral elements you can tie in]. This can also be at the aspirational level, and [EX: instrumental ability for rock, dancing for pop/dance, but also costume...]

My genre is known for featuring what Altman refers to as [emotional/visceral pleasures or intellectual puzzles], which can be seen in the [existing vid EX]. In mine, we [EX]

Costume is a defining feature of genre conventions in music video, and we noted the following as typical, further backed up by our own audience primary research [you can BRIEFLY detail if you want to]. Hebdige placed distinctive costume at the heart of his concept of subculture, and that clearly applies here. Much of our own costume/make-up work [EX] would be recognised within the broader genre of ..., but we did incorporate specific signifiers of this sub-culture [EX]

Genre, as we've seen, is a crucial concept for commercially exploiting music and for artists to attract an audience, but the concept can prove very loose when examined closely. The postmodernist Baudrillard put it typically colourfully when describing genre as [use all or any 1 part of his quote: 'a principal of contamination, a law of impurity, a parasitical economy']. Katie Wales put it even more bluntly when arguing that 'genre is an intertextual concept'. I found many examples of [genre] videos that reflected this [EX], borrowing from film, Tv and wider culture as well as from within and beyond this music video genre. In ours, we encoded intertextual references to [EX]. This was one means of avoiding simply being what Negus describes as a 'generecist, rather taking a pastichist approach. As we don't expect every viewer to recognise these references, there also what Rick Altman, in discussing pleasures that audiences gain from genres, describes as 'intellectual puzzles'. Bourdieu, whose work fits well with Hebdige's subculture concept, would recognise the 'cultural capital' on offer to those who can correctly identify the influences from our work.

Baudrillard's 'simulacra': Weezer's Buddy Holly eg

A short post, just reflecting a discussion today on the postmodern philosopher Baudrillard's contentious (but ingenious?) concept of the simulacra, which argues that as we now exist in an endless sea of signifiers, or chains of signifiers with no concrete starting/reference point, we cannot claim to know of any actual 'reality'. So, Disneyland is the real America; the Gulf War, supposedly fought on our TV screens in 1991, never really happened, to take two of his most infamous proclamations.

Its a concept which often and readily applies itself to music video, with many videos influenced by other videos which may have been influenced by other media (especially TV/film) in turn. Weezer's Buddy Holly, directed by Michel Gondry, is an exemplar - it is a representation of a 90s band as part of a 70's TV show about 50's America, which heavily influenced perceptions of that decade (so, the long chain of signification in which any perceivable reality has been utterly lost, and is rendered unknowable)

Below the video I've uploaded a photo of p. 175 from the excellent Money For Nothing, Austerlitz's history of the music video; he describes the video, for example, as 'a pastiche of a pastiche'. We would later see Nirvana and other acts (see Outkast's Hey Ya at the end of the post) copy this idea of inserting the act into an old TV show (and the Beastie Boys, of course, created their own affectionate pastiche of the 70/80s cop show with Sabotage).

Austerlitz on the Weezer vid

FROM THE WIKI:

Postmodernist French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. Where Plato saw two steps of reproduction—faithful and intentionally distorted (simulacrum)—Baudrillard sees four: (1) basic reflection of reality; (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum, which "bears no relation to any reality whatsoever".^[7] In Baudrillard's concept, like Nietzsche's, simulacra are perceived as negative, but another modern philosopher who addressed the topic, Gilles Deleuze, takes a different view, seeing simulacra as the avenue by which an accepted ideal or "privileged position" could be "challenged and overturned".^[8] Deleuze defines simulacra as "those systems in which different relates to different by means of difference itself. What is essential is that we find in these systems no prior identity, no internal resemblance".^[9]

<sup>See the ProdEval blog for more on this and other media theories.


... 
Such 1950s representations are influenced by classic movies such as these...


...</sup> 

Postmodernism

This is a key topic, and a gift really as far as exam prep AND coursework blogging/Eval is concerned: a complex but digestible idea which invites consideration of conflicting views + arguments. Not surprisingly, I've blogged on this many times; I'll gather links to these below then you can carry on to what has been the main post on this key topic.

http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/11/gta5-postmodern-theory-baudrillard.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/06/your-sample-q1a-answers.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2011/05/1a-1b-guides.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/06/dictionary-of-pomo-terms-alterity.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2010/05/you-simply-must-read-this.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/05/q1a-guide.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/04/pomo-by-louderthanwar-blog.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/04/slasher-sitcom-holliston-fearnetcom.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/03/q1b-audience.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/03/digitisation-self-published-short-film.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2011/04/postmodernism.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2010/04/some-prompts-for-q1a.html;
 

UPDATE 11TH JUNE 2012: single paragraphs on famous postmodern theorists added to the end of this post. Pick one or more + think of how you can apply such ideas to your own work - you don't have to agree; the point you might wish to make can validly be a rejection of the theory (of any theory) ALSO: dictionary of pomo terms added to bottom of post

A PowerPoint on pomo theory: for all your A2 vids, and most of your AS openings, you should be able to apply the concepts of bricolage or pastiche...

Postmodernism theories and texts

View more PowerPoint from raybloggs

http://alleynsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Postmodern%20Media is useful.

Strinati's (1995) 5 Key Features of Postmodernism

The following notes are based on the relevant chapter in Dan Laughey's Key Themes in Media Theory, a very useful book as regards the exam...
The concept of postmodernism denies definition to some extent, but Dominic Strinati outlined 5 key characteristics in 1995 that are often cited:

1. Breakdown of the distinction between culture and society
2. An emphasis on style over substance
3. Breakdown of the distinction between high art and popular culture
4. Confusions over time and space
5. Decline of metanarratives ['grand theories such as Marxism, Christianity and ... modernism have lost their currency for modern societies']*

*quoted from pp. 147-148

Jean Baudrillard and Simulacra

Baudrillard is famed for the notorious argument that the Gulf War did not happen, labelling coverage of it an example of hyperreality, or a simulacra:

The Gulf War did not take place, according to Baudrillard, because it was won by the mighty US Air Force before it had begun. The lasting memories of this war for most people were screened images - transmitted via military operations to CNN and other western media - showing how US pilots pinpointed and then bombed Iraqi targets (...) from thousands of miles above land. As such, 'This war is conducted according to the media model: war as a technological relationship ... founded on the abolition of symbolic exchange and the simulation of real communication' (Merrin 2005: 84). This is not a war in the sense of prolonged combat and conflict (the first two world wars, by contrast, really did take place); instead, we experience a virtual war, much like a video game simulates real warfare, and therefore this real-time, media-saturated spectacle is nothing other than what Baudrillard calls a 'non-event'. Subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq amount to 'a rehash of the past, with the same deluge of military forces, bogus information, senseless bombardment, emotive and deceitful language, technological deployment and brainwashing. Like the Gulf War: a non-event, an event that does take place' (Baudrillard 2002: 34). [Laughey, 2007: 151]

A more detailed breakdown (source: http://www.sociology.org.uk/pcpmod.doc) follows:
Www.sociology.org.Uk Pcpmod