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Monday 25 March 2019

Kiss of the vampire

The poster shows obvious signs that it is a vampire horror. The iconography of the blood, as well as the red and black colour scheme are clear tropes of the horror genre. The imagery of the dying background, large castle in the distance, and the bats, which have been demonised by Hollywood, also tie in with the vampire theme, and the audience at the time definitely would have recognised them as such. The biggest sign on the poster is the title containing the word "vampire". The title also contains the word "kiss", which shows that there is a sexual nature to the movie. To the left is a man dressed in very traditional attire and his teeth are bare, showing the audience clearly that he is the vampire. He is holding a woman in his arm. She is kneeling beside him with her head swung back and mouth open. She is clearly submissive to him and presented as a victim. The man is shown having the dominance between them in a way typical of the time. The other man and woman however are the opposite. This time, it is the man that is kneeling and at the mercy of the woman. The woman, while still sexualised, stands above the man, a protective hand on his shoulder as she fights off bats. She completely defies the victim trope, instead acting as a protector and having the most aggressive facial expression and body language out of the four. Even the vampire looks frightened and seems to be shying away from the bats rather than fighting back.



The movie was released in 1963. This was at the dawn of the second wave of feminism, where the dynamic between men and women was being challenged and the power balance was changing. As the poster of a horror movie, the poster must encompass some level of fear. In this poster, you could argue that, as a movie being targeted at a male audience, the fear comes from the central woman having power over a man. For most men at the time, this was a fear that came with the feminist movement.

Monday 18 March 2019

WaterAid- Rain is good

-establishing shot of middle class UK kitchen
-audio bridge created when cutting between the UK kitchen to crops in Africa
-crops are growing, positive imagery of prosperity
-warm lighting, bright colours
-singing old song to engage with and older audience who will be familiar with that song
-the song is upbeat, includes words like "sunny"
-girl singing song contrasts news on the radio
-positive imagery of people farming, children being happy
-two figures in the ad, including the main girl, seem to be in school uniform
-girl collecting clean water with other members of community
-multiple close up shots of happy faces
-statistics of how many people are unable to have what the people in the ad have, leaves the negative connotations to the audience's imagination
-message at the end uses emotional manipulation by using words like "help" and having people text the word "SUNNY" which has a lot of positive connotations
-also informs us the girls name is Claudia at the end, which humanises her and helps the audience form a more personal connection to it
-only asking for a small amount of money, £3. Telling us specifically about Claudia helps us see how £3 could help her, instead of people wondering how such a small amount of money could effect such a big problem.

Monday 11 March 2019

"Run the world" vs "Dream"

In the "Run the world (girls)" music video a clear binary opposite is made between the men and the women. At 0.20 minutes in the music video, we get an establishing shot of men running with riot shields and batons. This is a very violent way to portray men in the video, especially compared to Beyonce, who so far in this video has only been shown dancing by herself. The men in this video are presented very much as dangerous and predatory figures. However, despite the seemingly imminent danger of the approaching men, Beyonce is not shown to be phased. Typically within media, women are shown as being victims of men, and when they are they are often weak and frightful. Beyonce completely defying this could represent her taking back the power from the patriarchy by not giving into the fear they've tried to subdue her with. This conflict between male and female is an example of Levi-Strauss' theory of binary oppositions.

Similarly, in the Dizzee Rascal "Dream" music video, the binary opposite is Dizzee and the puppets, and the woman playing the piano. The woman represents an old white Britain, one that is conservative and reluctant to change. Dizzee, on the other hand, represents a young multicultural Britain that embraces the new and strange. The woman sitting at the piano has control over the puppets, who are limited by her control. However, there are moments when the puppets do things that make the woman uncomfortable, which could show them fighting back against her, but most likely portrays how she is disturbed by the harsh reality of their lives and would rather choose to ignore it than help in any way. However, Dizzee not being a puppet shows that he has perhaps managed to break away from her control, in a similar way to how Beyonce broke away form the men's control. However, this is in the opposite direction, as this is a man reclaiming power from a controlling woman.

Dizzee Rascal's music video also shows the conflict between white police and young black men. This is shown at 1:04 in the music video when the two black men are caught stealing and one is attacked by the police officer with a baton. Despite it being portrayed in a humorous way, there is a clear message of police brutality. This is highly relevant as, especially within the last twenty years, police brutality is an issue that makes appearances on the news regularly. Despite how long the issue has been going on for, consistently white police officers are still getting away with it and the issue does not seem to be improving. This could be in part because many people in power are white and for them, police brutality is not something they would ever experience and therefore may have a harder time understanding the grave seriousness of it. Dizzee's portrayal of the attack as comedic could reflect this as through the eyes of white Britain, in this case the woman sitting at the piano, such issues are not taken as seriously as they should be. For white Britain, police brutality is such a foreign concept that all they can do is laugh at it. This links into Gilroy's theory of post-colonialism, which states that the representation of groups (in this case black youths) are still affected by ideologies carried over from the time of colonial discourse.

In contrast, Beyonce's video shows a conflict between figures of authority and a young community, but both presented groups are multicultural. At 0:47, there is a long shot of the men, many of which are carrying batons. This is a weapon typically used by police officers, and therefore this immediately plants the idea in the audience's head that these men are somewhat representative of authority. However, unlike in Dizzee Rascal's "dream" where every police officer is shown to be white, in this it is much more mixed ethnically.  The women are the same. This presents a very different idea, as there is no clear show of one race having power over another. One could argue that this presents a much more complex issue where racial imbalance is still able to take place despite the illusion of equality as presented in this. However one could also argue that race was not the main focus of the video, and instead Beyonce was more interested in presenting the dynamic between men and women, which even the title of the song references. Rather than make commentary on the racial issues of our world, she highlighted it by making both sides ethnically diverse, perhaps showing how things should be and in that sense making people notice how it often isn't in our world.

Tuesday 5 March 2019

Dream- Dizzee Rascal

The main narrative of the music video is about Dizzee Rascal's rise to fame. The whole thing is shown with a presenter and puppets. The video is actually a parody of the 1940's children's show "Muffin the Mule", starring a woman who looks very similar to Annette Mills. The whole video is quite grainy, giving it the appearance of being older. While the song itself has a clear message about following your dreams and staying true to yourself, the music video subverts that message. By using puppets, it shows that despite the message of being able to do whatever you want no matter where you come from, everyone is held back by where they're from. With the whole setting being reflective of the working class and street life, with the off-licence building on the piano and the lyrics reflect the stereotypical life on the streets. There is also imagery of graffiti and stealing TVs.

The binary opposites in the video are Dizzee Rascal and the puppets, and the woman sitting at the piano. The woman at the piano could be seen as white British society, and she is keeping Dizzee Rascal in a box. He is only let out on her terms and the use of the nursery rhyme shows that it has to child friendly to be allowed. This could very much be seen as commentary on how black artists have to portray themselves as unthreatening to be allowed in white Britain's society. Most of the puppets used in the video are also black, and are presented in a way reminiscent of black face, perhaps showing how black people are viewed by the white middle class. On the other hand, the policeman puppets are shown to be white and committing police brutality against the black teenagers. However, the policeman is also a puppet controlled by strings, which could show that all people of the working class, no matter of race, are not completely in control of their own lives.

The whole music video and lyrics make many references to typical city life, as well as the culture around grime music.