Music Video: Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

Our second Music Video CSP is Michael Jackson - Billie Jean.

This was a hugely influential media product that helped set the conventions for future music videos - and persuaded Michael Jackson's record company to throw million-dollar budgets at future productions.

Notes from the lesson

Goodwin’s music video theory

Andrew Goodwin’s theory of music videos states that music videos contain some or all of the following elements:

• A link between the visuals & lyrics (compliment, contradict or amplify)
• Genre characteristics (heavy metal in industrialised settings; rap music in urban street contexts etc.)
• Contain intertextual references (references to popular culture)
• Contain notions of looking (e.g. screens within screens)
• Include objectification of females (e.g. male gaze)
• Include demands of the record label (close ups of lead singer, symbols or motifs associated with the band / performer etc.)
• Video will be performance, narrative or concept based.

Neale’s genre theory of Repetition and Difference

Steve Neale states that though all genres are structured along the identical conventions of plot, narrative and mise-en-scene, success lies in their ability to manipulate and re-shape these elements.

In this sense, all genres all contain instances of repetition and difference – and difference is essential to the economy of the genre.

Neale’s model holds that a product’s genre is defined by:

• How much it conforms to its genre’s individual conventions and stereotypes. A product must match the genre’s conventions to be identified as part of that genre if it is to attract that audience.
• How much a product subverts the genre’s conventions and stereotypes. The product must subvert convention enough to be considered unique and not just a clone of another product.

Michael Jackson: defining genre

Michael Jackson largely defined the modern music video with Billie Jean. He followed it with two bigger-budget videos: Bad (directed by Martin Scorcese) and Thriller (directed by John Landis) – pushing the boundaries of the music video genre.

Both of these later videos were effectively short films that leaned heavily on film genres – using well established film directors. This reinforced the intertextual element of his music videos and helped to create the Michael Jackson identity of the 1980s and 1990s.




Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

Billie Jean changed the music industry by introducing the idea that a single must be accompanied by a high-production video - thereby transforming a song release into an “event”.

In doing so, Billie Jean transformed MTV from a small niche TV channel for young people into a cultural institution that wider society paid increasing attention to. It also changed MTV itself – persuading MTV executives that a white rock orientated audience would respond enthusiastically to videos featuring a black performer, something they had not previously believed.




Billie Jean and postmodernism

Postmodernists claim that we live in a media-saturated world – immersed in media products 24/7. So much so, that the distinction between the real world and the media representation of the real world has become blurred. 

Media producers are copying copies: we no longer have any distinction between the real world and real things and media images of these things. Everything original has been made, all we now have is finding originality in mixing old ideas.

This idea of ‘copying copies’ and finding originality in old ideas is a strong theme of Billie Jean – which uses polaroid photos and intertextual references to old movie genres.

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to create a comprehensive case study for Michael Jackson's Billie Jean music video.

Media Magazine reading: Billie Jean, birth of an icon

Go to our Media Magazine archive and read the case study on Billie Jean - birth of an icon (MM62 - page 20). Answer the following questions:

1) What was the budget for Billie Jean? How did this compare with later Michael Jackson videos?

2) Why was the video rejected by MTV?

3) Applying Goodwin's theory of music video, how does Billie Jean reflect the genre characteristics of pop music video?

4) How do the visuals reflect the lyrics in Billie Jean?

5) Why does the video feature fewer close-up shots than in most pop videos?

6) What intertextual references can be found in the video?

7) How does the video use the notion of looking as a recurring motif?

8) What representations can be found in the video?


Close-textual analysis of the music video

1) How is mise-en-scene used to create intertextuality - reference to other media products or genres? E.g. colour/black and white; light/lighting.

2) How does the video use narrative theory of equilibrium?

3) How are characters used to create narrative through binary opposition?

4) What is the significance of the freeze-frames and split-screen visual effects?

5) What meanings could the recurring motif of 'pictures-within-pictures' create for the audience?

6) Does the video reinforce or subvert theories of race and ethnicity - such as Gilroy's diaspora or Hall's black characterisations in American media?

7) Does this video reflect Steve Neale's genre theory of 'repetition and difference'? Does it reflect other music videos or does it innovate?

8) Analyse the video using postmodern theory (e.g. Baudrillard's hyper-reality; Strinati's five definitions of postmodernism). How does the 'picture-in-picture' recurring motif create a postmodern reading?


Extension reading: Michael Jackson

Read this fascinating Guardian feature on Michael Jackson and race - building on our recent work on music video, genre, theory and representations of race and ethnicity.

Another Guardian feature - How Billie Jean changed the world - explores the cultural influence of the song and video. 


Complete for homework - due Wednesday after half-term.

Magazines: Men's Health - Audience

Our first Magazine Close-Study Product is Men's Health.

We need to study both the target audience for Men's Health and the audience pleasures that readers get from the magazine.

Notes from the lesson

Men’s Health (UK edition) has a circulation of 146,000 (down 16% in a year and including 50k free copies) and a readership of close to 1 million. It began as a health magazine in the USA in 1986 and has gradually evolved into a men’s lifestyle magazine. The UK edition launched in 1995.

Definitions
Circulation is the actual number of copies printed and distributed. Readership is an estimate of how many people read the magazine in total (also known as readers-per-copy). For Men’s Health, copies in a gym or waiting room will be read by many different  people.

Circulation figures are provided by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and readership estimates by the National Readership Survey (NRS).

Demographics: Social class

Men’s Health has a largely middle class readership but also attracts readers in the C2DE bracket:

ABC1 men: 64%
AB men: 32% 
C2DE: 36%

It is significantly higher than rivals GQ and Esquire in terms of circulation and readership but GQ and Esquire have a more upmarket demographics (higher % of ABC1 and AB readers).

Psychographics

Men’s Health Media Pack focuses on products that reflect a certain lifestyle such as fashion, watches, grooming, fitness and cars. This would suggest targeting the Aspirer and Succeeder psychographic groups with perhaps elements of Mainstreamers and Explorers.

Audience pleasures

There are many potential audience pleasures for Men’s Health readers. Applying Blumler & Katz’s Uses & Gratifications theory, two in particular would be:

Personal identity: Readers enjoy having their lifestyle reflected and endorsed through reading the magazine

Surveillance: Men’s Health is heavily focused on self-improvement and learning how to live a healthier, more successful life: “When it comes to life goals, claim the hat trick”.

Men's Health - Audience blog tasks

Read the Men's Health Media Pack in full to get a good idea of the demographics and psychographics for the Men's Health target audience then answer the following questions:

1) How does the magazine introduce itself?

2) What does the introduction suggest about the representation of masculinity in Men's Health's?

3) How do the print statistics for Men's Health compare to GQ and Esquire?

4) What is the difference between circulation and readership?

5) What was the circulation of Men's Health in thousands at the time this Media Pack was published? What about the readership for ABC1 men? AB men? [Note: this Media Pack was published in 2016 and some of the figures have fallen since then. Up to date circulation figures can be found at the top of this blog post].

6) How do readers generally interact with the digital version of the magazine?

7) How many people do Men's Health reach across social media platforms?

8) What is the audience profile for Men's Health readers? 

9) What is the Men's Health fashion philosophy? How much do Men's Health readers collectively spend on fashion?

10) What is the average watch collection value for the Men's Health audience? What do the statistics about watches suggest about the Men's Health audience demographics and psychographics?  

11) What percentage of Men's Health readers use moisturiser daily? What does this suggest about Men's Health readers' view of masculinity?

12) What does the media pack suggest regarding the Men's Health audience for fitness and technology?

13) Men's Health luxe is a series of magazines distributed with Men's Health targeting a specific aspect of the Men's Health audience. What are these three brand extension magazines called and what do they cover?

14) What do the Men's Health luxe magazines suggest about the demographics and psychographics of the Men's Health audience?

15) What additional brand extensions do Men's Health offer?

16) What are the global statistics for Men's Health?

17) What does the 2017 calendar editorial specials suggest about the Men's Health audience?

18) What audience pleasures are offered by the magazine?

19) What lifestyle and job would you expect the average Men's Health reader to have?

20) Why do you think Men's Health has managed to (just) remain profitable when many other magazines have struggled due to the rise of digital media?

Complete for homework - due Monday 3 June. 

Music Video: Common - Letter to the Free

Our first Music Video CSP is Common - Letter to the Free.

This is a stunning music video and protest song that documents black American culture and the legacy of slavery.

Notes from the lesson

Common: a pioneering artist

Common is a Black American cultural icon who has maintained a political and social concern in his music. At one of the most charged periods in American history, the video Letter to the Free is presented as his contribution to the divisive political and social issues of contemporary America, a sense that he is attempting to draw attention to initiating a new wave of ‘protest music’.

Michael Eric Dyson on Common

Dyson on black stereotypes and Common: “Many critics don’t account for the complex ways that some artists in hip hop play with stereotypes to either subvert or reverse them. Amid the pimp mythologies and metaphors that gut contemporary hip hop, rappers like Common… seize on pimpology’s prominence to poke fun at its pervasiveness. 

“Hip hop is still fundamentally an art form that traffics in hyperbole, parody, kitsch, dramatic license, double entendres, signification, and other literary and artistic conventions to get its point across.”


Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean (2007)

Common - Selma soundtrack

Common and John Legend wrote Glory as the soundtrack for Selma, a 2014 film portraying the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, a key moment in the Civil Rights Movement.



The marches were a non-violent protest to demonstrate the desire of black Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Common returned to the theme of protest with Letter to the Free – highlighting the mass incarceration of black Americans.

Common: Letter to the Free

Letter to the Free was directed by Bradford Young (the cinematographer on Selma). The video has the camera moving at a slow, aching pace through an empty prison where Common, singers Andra Day and Bilal, and other musicians perform the song in different spaces in the prison rooms. 

A black square hovering in the air appears throughout the clip, which, in a final shot, is framed as empty space in a field.

Amendment 13: ‘Black Codes’

The song was written for Ava DuVernay’s Netflix documentary 13th focusing on the historic legacy of the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. Theoretically written to outlaw slavery, the 13th Amendment had the effect of paving the way for local and State law reforms that created loopholes that effectively enabled the continued enslavement of Black Americans through mass imprisonment. The so-called Black Codes, introduced at state level in the southern states, provided for forced labour as punishment for petty crimes that in reality only applied to the newly emancipated black slaves.

Common - Letter to the Free blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to create a comprehensive case study for Common's Letter to the Free.

Social and cultural context

Read this Billboard interview where Common talks about Letter to the Free, political hip hop and contemporary American society. Use the article and the notes we have made in lessons (also available above) to answer the following questions on the social, cultural and genre contexts for Letter to the Free.

1) What other projects has Common been involved in over recent years?

2) What is the 13th Amendment of the American Constitution?

3) What were the Black Codes?

4) Why do people suggest that the legacy of slavery is still a crucial aspect to American culture 150 years after it was abolished by the 13th Amendment?

5) Why was Ava DuVernay inspired to make the Netflix documentary 13th?

6) Focusing on genre, what was the most significant time period for the rise in political hip hop?

7) Common talks about other current artists that have a political or protest element to their music. Who are they? Are there any other hip hop artists that you are aware of that have a strong political element to their work?

8) What album is Letter to the Free taken from? What was the critical reception for this album? You'll need to research this - the Wikipedia entry for the album is a good place to start.


Close-textual analysis and representation

Re-watch the music video several times to complete the following tasks in specific detail:

1) How does the Letter to the Free music video use cinematography to create meanings for the audience? (Camera shots and movement).

2) What is the significance of the constantly moving camera?

3) Why is the video in black and white?

4) How is mise-en-scene used to construct meaning for the audience - prison setting, costume, props, lighting, actor placement?

5) Focusing on the track, what are the key lyrics that suggest the political message of the song?

6) What is the significance of the floating black square motif? Discuss your own interpretations alongside Common's explanation of it in the Billboard feature linked above.

7) How does the video reference racism, slavery and the oppression of black culture? Make reference to specific shots, scenes or moments in the video.

8) How can Gilroy's idea of black diasporic identity be applied to Common's Letter to the Free?

9) What other theories of race and ethnicity can be applied to this video? E.g. Hall, Rose or Dyson.

10) What current events in America and worldwide are referenced in the song and video?


Complete for homework - due date set by coursework teacher.

BFI Study Day: follow-up work

The BFI Study Day on critical theory was a brilliant opportunity to develop our knowledge and understanding of media theorists.

We covered a lot of ground from gender to semiotics and postmodern theory. Complete the following tasks on your Media 1 Exam blog to follow up our work from the study day:

1) Type up your notes from the day.

2) Write a one-sentence summary of the ideas of the theorists Matthew Daintrey-Hall covered (you can use your notes from task 1 here if relevant):

bell hooks:

Liesbet van Zoonen:

Judith Butler:

Saussure:

Barthes:

Stuart Hall:

Lyotard:

Baudrillard:

3) Choose one of the films we saw extracts from and watch the whole movie: Captain Fantastic (2016), Pulp Fiction (1994) or Inception (2010). Write a 300 word analysis of your chosen film using theories from the study day (use the exam paragraph structure we were shown on the day - theory introduction, examples from text, why this 'proves' or 'disproves' the theory).

Due: Friday 24 May 

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 characterisations in American media:

• The Slave figure: “the faithful fieldhand… 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)

Tricia Rose: Black Noise (1994)



Tricia Rose was one of the first academics to study the cultural impact of the hip hop genre in her influential book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994).

Rose suggested that hip hop initially gave audiences an insight into the lives of young, black, urban Americans and also gave them a voice (including empowering female artists). However, Rose has since criticised commercial hip hop and suggests black culture has been appropriated and exploited by capitalism.

Michael Eric Dyson: Know What I Mean (2007)

Georgetown University Professor of Sociology Michael Eric Dyson has passionately defended both hip hop and black culture – Jay-Z describes him as “the hip hop intellectual”.



Dyson suggests that political hip hop in the 1990s didn’t get the credit (or commercial success) it deserved and this led to the rap music of today – which can be flashy, sexualised and glamorising criminal behaviour.

Dyson states: “Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such critics. Sadly, the enlightened aspects of hip hop are overlooked by critics who are out to satisfy a grudge against black youth culture…” Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean (2007)


Hip hop debate - full video
As requested in class, this appears to be the full Google debate on hip hop if you want to watch more from where those extracts came from.



Music Video theory - blog tasks

Childish Gambino, the musical stage name of writer and performer Donald Glover, released an incredible critique of American culture and Donald Trump with This Is America last year.

The music video is a satirical comment on American culture, racism and gun violence. Racking up 10m views in the first 24 hours, it now stands at over half a billion views and has been dubbed ‘genius’ and ‘a masterpiece’. 

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?

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

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

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

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

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

Complete this for homework - due next Wednesday.

Music Video: An introduction

Our next topic is Music Video - with two brilliant Close-Study Products.

Music video is a targeted CSP which means we need to focus on media language and representation. The CSPs are Common's Letter to the Free and Michael Jackson's classic Billie Jean so we'll also be looking at the representation of race and ethnicity and incorporating post-colonial theory.

An introduction to Music Video

Music videos typically feature movement – often fast paced either in terms of actors, camerawork or editing. Many contain a performance element or narrative. Music videos can also feature visual effects and intertextuality.

Music videos were originally designed as a promotional device to sell the band or artist’s music but have developed over time to become a recognised artform or product in their own right. Modern music videos no longer have the huge budgets of the 1980s and 1990s but digital media means they are now more accessible than ever. Videos such as Psy’s Gangnam Style have received over 3 billion views on YouTube.

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is when one media text references another media text – through genre, conventions, mise-en-scene or specific cultural references.

Music videos often use intertextual references – often to classic films but also to television, popular culture, news, videogames or even other music videos.

Notable examples of intertextual music videos:

Music Video introduction blog task

Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet #69: Music Video. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets - you'll need to save the factsheet to USB or email it to yourself in order to complete this at home. Read the factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) What is the purpose of a music video?

2) How has the digital age changed the production and distribution of music videos?

3) Which three major record labels are behind VEVO? What is VEVO and why was it created?

4) What are the key conventions of a music video?

5) How can narrative be used in music video? Give an example of a music video that uses a narrative.

6) What examples are provided in the factsheet for intertextuality in music videos?

7) Why do audiences enjoy intertextual references in media products?

8) Read the music video example analysis on page 3 of the factsheet. Select a music video of your own choice and write your own analysis using the following headings:

• Conventions (movement/narrative/artist)
• Intertextuality
• Representation
• Audience
• Institution

9) Watch the video for Ice Cube's It Was A Good Day (1993). How did this video set the conventions for later hip-hop music videos?



10) How important do you think music videos are in the marketing and promotion of music artists in 2018? Are music videos essential to a band or artist's success?


Complete for homework - due next week Friday.