Intertextuality: Representation of British Society

                                                                 Madness-Our House
                                                       (Release date-12th of November ,1982)

Mis-en-scene:

• Old fashion British Mews home(wallpaper,clothes,decour)
• 1980's British working class family lifestyle 
• Man in British school uniform(featuring a blazer,hat and shorts) in a Queen rock style
• Cockney British accents
• British family play squash)
• Old fashion 1980's cars
• Lead singer wearing fingerless gloves

                                                     Kid British-Our house is Dadless

                                                    (Release date-4th of July,2009)

Intertextuality- Representation of British youths,,young women,young men, social class, the late 2000's, disfunctional family life, British society.

Mis-en-scene: Clothing, Lyrics, settings, Age, Social class, Race

• Children- Careless, Fun loving, playing in the garden

• British teenagers- Working class, wearing Checkered shirts and Hoodies, socializing in their local postcode area.
• Teenagers are shown being disrespectful and rebellious by jumping over neighbours fences.
• A Policeman is shown arresting teenage girls.
• Teenage boys are shown rapping about house areas, often comparing their homes to houses in other areas of London.
• A working class woman is shown cooking a British breakfast in her kitchen (which consists of bacon, eggs, beans etc) 
• A young man in his early 20's is shown to be unemployed,unoccupied and appears to be still living in his mother's home because of that.
• A teenager raps about having a disfunctional family home and also living in a one parent household. This can be seen as he refers to his 'Mummsie' as being Dadless, which is a clear reference to how many children in London are brought up by single parents.
• School boys are shown playing football in their uniforms.
• A whiteman is shown with dreadlocks.
• The camera focus's on the teenagers to show what they are wearing(trainers, checkered shirts, hats, hoodies etc)
• In this video, young people are shown to be spending more of their time outside on the streets with their friend and less time at home with their families. This type of Mis-en-scene is used to reflect how young British people consider their friends to be their families and also tend to draw away from their actual families when they reach the adolescent stage of life.
• Establishing shots of houses are shown seemingly pacted together as if they are estate.
• A teenage boy refers to his house as a Manor house.
• Teenagers are represented as being very lazy in this video. A boy in his late teens raps about his mother giving him orders and that he often replies by saying that 'I'll do it later or yeah in a minute', which shows that he is often very unreliable or unwilling to carry out his mother's requests.

Culture change

• This song was influenced by an old fashion 1980's British song.
• In 'Our House' the lead singer is white, whereas in 'Our house is Dadless' the lead singer from Kid British is a young black teenager. This can be used to show how in the 1980's the common stereotype of a British young man would be a white man  , but nowadays in the 2000's , London has become disversified with many different cultures, one of the most common being the Black british culture.

Homogenius

This band who performs this song consists of a variety of different races and races of each singer goes in this order as they take turns in singing : Black boy, Mix race boy and then a White boy.

Alternative themes- A young man desires to have a good lifestyle and be very wealthy. When the audience is introduced to him he is shown to be sat down in a sun chair while holding a fizzy drink the same way he would hold a cock tail drink. He is clearly imaging himself holding a cocktail being near a pool. 

This was probably used to represent the harsh reality of teenagers having very big aspirations when it is very unlikely for them to achieve their goals.

Secular religious lifestyle- Teenagers are presented as being non-religious and unwilling to go to church.

Our house is Dadless- The singer's parents have apparently been divorced.

The teenagers jump over their neighbour's fences- They consider their community to be their family as they jump over fences as if they are allowed to do so.

People are shown to be keeping farm animals like sheep and chicken in their gardens. The teenagers do this as a way of becoming closer to nature, which reflects their desire for lots of land.

They refer to their homes as 'Play stations'. 

Examples of Intertextuality in Music Videos

The influence of video games will predominate for the younger audience with the more sophisticated look of characters emerging(as seen for example in Robbie Williams's 'Let Love be your Energy'  which was directed by Olly Reed and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers 'Californication which was released in 2000 and directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Another example of a music video that was influenced by the style of video games was the Linkin Park music video 'Breaking the Habit'(directed by Joe Hahn) which was released in 2004 and features a Japanese animation stylization, in which the music video's setting and performers are presented entirely through Japanese anime.

                                        Califorinication by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (2000)

Let Love be your Energy by Robbie Williams (2001)

 Breaking the Habit by Linkin Park (2003)

John Stuart's description of Music Video "incorporating,raiding and reconstructioning" is essentially the essence of intertextuality.

Using something in which the audience's family can generate both nostalgic associations and new meanings.

My First Music video idea

                                                              Playing in the Shadows

                                                                                

Andrew Goodwin's Music Video analysis

Andrew Goodwin writing in 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory (Roatledge 1992).
                                              

1.Demonstrate genre characteristics(stage performance in rock video, dance routine)

2.There must be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.

3. There must be a relationship between the music and thje visuals.

4.The demands of a record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist, in order to make the audience more identifiable with the their target audience. In addition, the artist may also develop motifs which would recur across their work (a visual style).

5.There are frequent references to the notions of looking (examples of these references in music videos can be presented through various techniques such as screens within screens, telescopes etc). This types of looking motions are commonly presented in a sexual matter, as many female bodies in music videos have been shown to be presented in a  voyeuristic manner.In addition there have been some cases where females have been shown as love interests when they are the objects of male artists affections.

6. There would often be intertextual references to various other different kinds of media such as TV programmes,films and other music videos.

Below is a list of mainstream film-makers that began their careers by directing music videos

David Fincher- Madonna's music videos Vouge and Express yourself

                                                                   Director: David Fincher


Madonna's Vouge music video                                       Madonna's Express yourself music video                                                                

                                       

                                                  Spike Jonze- Fatboy Slim and Praise you

                                                      
                                                                    Director: Spike Jonze


                                                    Michael Gondry- Bjork, Foo Fighters

                                         
                                                           Director : Michael Gondry

Development of Technical Codes

The key innovation in the development of the modern music video was of copurse video recording and editing process, along with the development of a number of related effects such as a chroma key or Blue/Green screen.

The advent of high quality colour video tape recorders and portable video cameras enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high cost of using film.
                                                          
                                                                     Chorma key

                                                         


In the 1990's, a number of techical codes had begun to be commonly used in music videos that were made at the time:

• The most common form of editing that was associated with the music promotional videos were the fast cut montage.
• Many of the moving images that were presented in the videos were impossible to grasp on the first viewing. This would mean that the video would need to be viewed multiple times to allow the audience to fully understand the videos.
• Split screen and colourisation were also commonly used effects.
• Non-representational techniques, in which the musical artist is never shown, this technical was very commonly used in 1990's music videos.
• Lack of edits, long takes and steadicam also became a commonly used experimentation.

Definition of Intertextuality

Definition-The term Intertextuality refers to the process of creating references to any kind of media text via another media text. In other words Intertextuality essentially means for a type of media(film,television,music etc) to pay homage to another media text.

Intertextuality in Television

These two images below are an example of Intertexuality of a film being presented through a television programme.
The picture on the top shows an image of the animated character Bart Simpson from 'The Simpsons' television programme in which his appearance has appeared to be altered so that his face and attire mirrors the appearance of the person in the right picture. The image on the bottom shows a fictional film character called Alex DeLarge, who is the protagonist from the 1971 film 'A Clockwork Orange'.
As the film 'A Clockwork Orange' was released in the early 1970's and 'The Simpsons was created in the lated 1980's , it is very clear that this television programme is paying homage to this past film by presenting the character of Bart in the same manner of Alex.
A possibile reason for this Intertextuality in between these two characters could be to show the main similiarites that these two fictional characters both have, in terms of their character traits.
In each of their respective media texts both of these characters are portrayed as adolescent, male protagonists who both have very negative characteristics as both are shown to be rebellious, mischievousness and rarely show any respect for their peers. In addition these two both appear to have very sadistic senses of humor as Bart finds pleasure in being rebellious to others, and Alex' main hobbies  include  assaulting ,robbing and raping  innocent people.
  

Intertextuality in film

Parody films such as 'Scary Movie' and 'Superhero movie' were created almost completely out of Intertextuality.
For example to 2008 spoof film 'Superhero movie' pays homage to other films which had been released before this film, which all belong to the same genre of superhero films(hence the film's title). In particular, this film uses the superhero film 'Spider-man(2002) as its main template , since Superhero movie contains as similar storyline with similar characters.
In further detail the film Spider-man's story centres around an american teenager called Peter Parker who   gains superhuman abilities after he is bitten by a radioactive spider and then becomes a superhero known as Spider-man.
This is very identical to the main plot of the parody film Superhero movie, in which a high school teenager named Rick Riker  also gains superhuman abilities from after being bitten by a radioactive dragonfly and the becomes a superhero called the Dragonfly.


The 2006 comedy film 'She's the man' and the 1998 romance film 'Shakespeare in Love' were both inspired by William Shakespeare's comedy play 'Twelth Night'. This play centres around a woman named Viola who disguises herself as a man , so that she can gain a job serving the Duke of Illyria, which is a job that only a man could get in the play's time period.
This plot theme is reflected in the films 'She's the man' and 'Shakespeare in Love'. This is shown as in these two films, the protagonists(which are both female) disguise themselves as members of the opposite sex so that they can both gain something, which would be unavailable to them as women.

                           


Intertextuality in music videos

This two images below are an example of intertexuality being presented through media texts such as music. The image on the left is a clip from the 2009 Pop music video 'She-wolf' in which the singer Shakira preforms an anti-gravity lean dance move.This can be seen as a use of intertextuality in the music industry as this maneuver, is very identical to the anti-gravity lean which was famously preformed by Michael Jackson in his 1987 Pop single 'Smooth Criminal'.
 In Smooth Criminal this anti gravity lean was achieved through the use of a hitching mechanism in the floor of the music video's set that would latch on to Jackson's shoes attaching him to the floor and therefore allowing him to preform this feat.
 Shakira herself had stated in an interview on the american television programme 'Good morning America', that the purpose of her preforming this dance move that was made famous by Michael Jackson in 1987 was so that she could pay tribute to him, in her music video as claimed that 'He was the king of artistic magic'.

                                

History of Music Videos

Ever since Film Cinema was introduced in the 19th century, this technology had created the ability to bring songs and music to life. Within the time period of over two decades, there have been many advances in the technology that is used to create films and music which have helped to transform music videos from how they were orginally to what they are today.

The Early Years

Music had began in the 1920's, when Motion pitures where still in the Silent film Era.

Many Jazz musicians of the time such as Bessie Smith had made short films to accompany popular blogs.

Bob Dylan

1965- Bob Dylan , Subtarian Homesick Blues as a segment for D.A. Pennebakers film. Dont look back- widely credited as one of the first modern music videos.

Pop music TV shows

1970- The record industry discovers TV shows as a great opportunity to promote their artists.

They focus on producing short 'promos' early music videos which started to replace the live performance of the artist on the TV show.

Bohemian Rhaspsody

1975- This was considered to be a ground breaking rock music video released by Queen in the 20th century. This was marked as the beginning of the video era and set the language for the modern music video. The video is thought to be a step forward in the music video industry since it was one of the first song videos to use the most advance video effects(of its time) which was achieved by taking advantage of visual and audio feedback, using shaped lens to create the honeycomb illusion and positioning the camera at a moniter.

Technical Codes-Camera Work

• As with any moving image text, how the camera is used and how images are sequenced will have a significant impact upon meaning.
• Camera movement,angle and shot distance all need to be analysed.
• Camera movement may accompany movement of performers(walking,dancing etc) but it may also be used to create a more dynamic feel to stage perdormance, by for instance circling the band as they perform on stage, which an be used to represent their union as a band or to create an illusion effect.
• Close up shots are often used quite predominatly,  mostly TV which is partly because of the size of the screen and partly because of the desire to create a sense of intimacy for the viewer. It also empasises half of the commodity on sale(not just the song, but the artist and particulary the voice).

Editing

Though the most common form of editing is associated with the music promo is fast cut montages, which renders many of the images impossible to grasp on thefirst viewing thus ensuring multiple viewing. There are videos which use slow pace and gentler transitions to establish the mood of the video or song.

This is particulary apparant for the work of many female solo artists.