Music Video Theory

Music Video: theory

There are a range of important theories we need to learn as part of our Music Video unit.

Both our Music Video Close-Study Products contain representations of black Americans. We therefore need to study a range of theories that address the representation of black or minority ethnic people in the media.

Notes from the lesson

Paul Gilroy: The Black Atlantic

Paul Gilroy is a key theorist in A Level Media and has written about race in both the UK and USA.

In The Black Atlantic (1993), Gilroy explores influences on black culture. One review states: “Gilroy’s ‘black Atlantic’ delineates a distinctively modern, cultural-political space that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but is, rather, a hybrid mix of all of these at once.”

Gilroy is particularly interested in the idea of black diasporic identity – the feeling of never quite belonging or being accepted in western societies even to this day.

For example, Gilroy points to the slave trade as having a huge cultural influence on modern America – as highlighted by Common’s Letter to the Free.

Diaspora: A term that originates from the Greek word meaning “dispersion,” diaspora refers to the community of people that migrated from their homeland. [Source: facinghistory.org]

Gilroy on black music

Gilroy suggests that black music articulates diasporic experiences of resistance to white capitalist culture. 

When writing about British diasporic identities, Gilroy discusses how many black Britons do not feel like they totally belong in Britain but are regarded as ‘English’ when they return to the country of their parents’ birth e.g. the Caribbean or Africa. This can create a sense of never truly belonging anywhere.

Additional theories on race representations and music

Stuart Hall: race representations in media

Stuart Hall suggests that audiences often blur race and class which leads to people associating particular races with certain social classes.

He suggests that western cultures are still white dominated and that ethnic minorities in the media are misinterpreted due to underlying racist tendencies. BAME people are often represented as ‘the other’.

Hall outlined three black characteristics in American media:

·                The Slave figure: “the faithful field hand… attached and devoted to ‘his’ master.” (Hall 1995)

·                The Native: primitive, cheating, savage, barbarian, criminal.

·                The Clown/Entertainer: a performer – “implying an ‘innate’ humour in the black man.” (Hall 1995)

https://youtu.be/Ouhdtrmzenw

Childish Gambino, the musical stage name of writer and performer Donald Glover, has just released a critique of American culture and Donald Trump with This Is America.

Racking up 10m views in 24 hours and already dubbed ‘genius’ and ‘a masterpiece’, the music video is a satirical comment on American culture, racism and gun violence.

Create a blogpost called 'Music video: theory', watch the video again then answer the questions below:


1) How does the This Is America video meet the key conventions of a music video?

- Mise en scene

- story line

- narrative 
- genre
- intertextuality

2) What comment is the video making on American culture, racism and gun violence?


- criticism of america for not valuing black lives even when those lives are innocent.
- Gun violence still exists today 

- Black people are still exploited by the whites, especially the police
- To be black in America—at any given time, vulnerable to joy or to destruction.

3) Write an analysis of the video applying the theories we have learned: Gilroy, Hall, Rose and Dyson. 

Dancers, celebrities, singers are hiding a lot of the crime, racism and killing that goes on in America, they distract us from the traumatic events.

- Dyson: hip hop lyrics reflect on peoples past and struggles. Self reflection. 
- Gilroy: points that the slave trade as having a huge cultural influence on modern America. Black Atlantic - 'the idea of the black culture never quite belonging or being accepted in the western society even to this day’ we see this in the music video how the black people are perceived as rebels and against society. They don’t feel that their culture fits in.
Hall: The Slave figure: “the faithful field hand… attached and devoted to ‘his’ master.” (Hall 1995). The Native: primitive, cheating, savage, barbarian, criminal. The Clown/Entertainer: a performer – “implying an ‘innate’ humour in the black man.” (Hall 1995)
- 

Read this Guardian feature on This Is America - including the comments below.

4) What are the three interpretations suggested in the article?


- Dancing covers up the violence 

- He is playing Jim Crow

- he is taking on the police


5) What alternative interpretations of the video are offered in the comments 'below the line'

- "Other people, always being influenced by things they shouldn't be."

- "I'm surprised that this movie isn't 30 seconds long, with him walking on set and then some police shooting him, That would be a more accurate description of the US."