Genre- Smith.

Understanding Genre

View more presentations from Rob McMinn

Mix Tape.- Life through the thicker lense

Mad House:                                 :Rihanna

Three Little Birds:                       :Bob Marley
Fuck You:                                   :Lily Allen
Smooth Criminal                         :Michael Jackson
New York                          :Paloma Faith
Hold You                           :Gyptian

Shooting Star                 :Air Traffic
Redemption Song                     :Rihanna Haiti Relief
The Scientist                           :Coldplay
White Blank Page                     :Mumford & Sons
Bring Me To Life             :Evanescence
I'm Yours                                   :The Script
I Need This                                 :Jessie J
Nothing Left To Loose                  :The Pretty Reckless
Pass That Dutch             :Missy Elliott

Back To Bed                             :Erik Hassle

IB and FC essay.

Jack Reid IB and FC Essay

Evaluating My Work.

Jack Reid

Smith

How have your research and planning skills progressed and allowed you to make more creative decisions?

Looking back from AS to A2 I feel as though my skills for research and planning have developed, this meaning I was able to make a more creative finished product. At AS I collectively made with my group an introductory sequence for a dance film, and at A2 I again collaborated with a group to make an alternative rock music video.

 By looking at either product it is clear that my research and planning skills have developed as the a2 product contains far more signs and symbols of the chosen genre (Barthes theory). For instance I was able to use ‘Google’ and ‘Wikipedia’ properly to gain important background knowledge, knowing how to correctly search for information and understanding what first appears is the most popular and generally what I am looking for. This then enabled the group to give a clear representation of the chosen genre.

 To give a clear indication of how my knowledge has progressed in research and planning I feel as though I have followed the theory of Tim O’reily’s DIKY triangle. The internet has enabled me to select data that I find relevant to then extract the information that will better my product, I then combine this information with the knowledge I already have/ to build new knowledge, this then combined with wisdom and creativity shows that I am capable of making a ‘realistic’ product. Before the above I found I wasn’t being thorough enough with my research, picking out things that I thought were correct opposed to what others considered correct and fitting for the selected genre, for instance Location in our AS product. The second half of my video was set in a field which completely contrasted with the first half, and the overall genre that I had chosen to work with. My knowledge and capability of using the internet (programmes such as Google and Wikipedia) has bettered, as I know no that being more specific with my search means my outcome will be more accurate and specific, i.e. ‘rock clothing’ to ‘Taylor Momsen The Pretty Reckless Stage outifts’.

 All research and planning was documented on Blogger for both tasks, looking back there is an incredible difference in clarity between the two, The AS blog appears more vague than the A2 blog. This is because in a2 I understood that blogger was their to gain audience feedback and that’s its not just a nice organised way of displaying your work. Instead of just posting pointless posts, I would post question’s to teachers which would then either better my knowledge and understanding or better my final product. This ensured that the task stayed on track and my final product had taken all sorts of opinion into account, meaning that it was appealing to all.

 In A2 the knowledge I have taken from research and planning helped me to be more creative, instead of just researching on the internet and ‘copying’ ideas (for instance in AS watching video’s on Youtube and only noticing and copying the obvious) I was able to take others ideas and general conventions to then adapt them into my own work. This taking into account the theory of Steve Neil and his idea of repetition and change, the fact you have to know your genre inside and out to then adapt it. “You need to know the rules to break the rules” this then tying into research and proving that thorough searches will better knowledge which will then meant I was capable of creating something creative. 

GAGA Postmodern.

TELEPHONE.

• Pastiche. The video has it in spades. It references other forms of media (Tarantino, exploitation films, Thelma & Louise) left and right, while parodying none of them. This is because parody relies on an underlying normative standard, which postmodernism categorically rejects. Instead it merely shows the audience a barrage of media, almost a celebration of how clever the director is for cramming so many references into a single video.

• Consumerism. The product placement is obvious, but it is not portrayed as humorous. The camera lingers too long on each product, and the video knows it, but it still manages to avoid parody. Rather, the video uses these consumer images as an integral part of its aesthetic without any comment on their social context.

     

• Self-reference. The blatant product placement shows a self-awareness in the video, but this particular brand of ironic detachment harms the video’s ability to make any sort of overall message on its own. Instead it implies that celebrating consumer culture is fine as long as we’re appropriately ironic about it, but this is a largely unintended consequence of the video’s aesthetic.

• Appropriation of identity-based struggle. Lady Gaga is interesting for turning the male gaze back on men, and for portraying women as subjects rather than objects in her videos (albeit still scantily-clad subjects). However, the resistance to power on Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s part is purely individual and brief (it’s very telling that Lady Gaga is bailed out of prison rather than escaping) Behind this initial layer of feminism there is still an individuated desire to become rich, given that Lady Gaga was saved from prison by money. She maintains her glamorous image inside and outside the prison’s walls, an implicit message that “excessive materialism is empowering to women, somehow,” as Alyx Vesey observed. Therefore her kind of feminism is integrated neatly into the agenda of neoliberals, who love to talk about glass ceilings being shattered while heaping disdain on poor women. 

• Incredulity towards metanarratives. Lyotard’s famous description of the postmodern condition applies even here, as it’s difficult to find an overall message or narrative in the video. There is a sequence of events interspersed with pop culture references and product placement, but little else.

Most works of postmodern culture incorporate the ethic of postmodern philosophy with even less critical engagement than postmodern philosophers themselves, and in so doing implicitly endorse the status quo. This video is no exception.

Ourfit inspired by condom.

Outfit inspired by nun and religion?

Outfit inspired by animal rights?

Outifit inspired by cousin it?

"the most attractive character"

Outfit inspired by blood?

"We're full of it, so why not be covered in it?"

With her constant imitation of popular gendered tropes, Lady Gaga’s performances work to disrupt the myth of an essential femininity. Consider the music video for “Telephone,” in which Gaga dances in a jaguar suit in front of her truck in the desert, imitating country-pop star Shania Twain in her 1997 video “That Don’t Impress Me Much.” Here, Gaga has contorted the conventional sexuality of Twain into something much more grotesque. Her one-piece cat suit includes boning around the ribs and pelvis that give Gaga the appearance of having a feline skeletal structure. In this way, the outfit blurs the line between the sexual appeal of animal print and the taboo of inter-species relations. Similarly, Gaga’s ghostly white make-up and dark eyes make her look like a corpse, producing a thanato-erotic anxiety in her spectators. Thus, in her imitation of Twain, Gaga has succeeded in making a familiar feminine image into an altogether uncomfortable one. Though Gaga’s body conforms to conventional standards of feminine beauty, it is used as a blank canvas on which a plurality of different identities – not all of them feminine – can be projected. Because Gaga moves so rapidly (but not seamlessly) between uncanny parodies, her appearance draws attention to the fact that gender is always imitatively constituted. The unending media gossip about the real status of Gaga’s gender and sexuality is a testament to the anxiety that her performances of drag have created. Though Gaga appears practically naked in almost all her music videos, her sexual identity remains ambiguous and creates uneasiness in her spectators. Insofar as Gaga continuously parodies the recognizable styles of other artists, she has made an identity of pastiche. She cites iconic, often gendered identities without indicating the existence of a ‘neutral’ or ‘normal’ self that these performances can be said to mask.

What is most notable about Gaga, and what I will analyze here, is her visual aesthetic. Gaga has a highly allusive, almost grotesque, haute-couture style. Sometimes she resembles other pop stars, sometimes a character from Japanese animation, or a Roy Lichtenstein print. What one might call her ‘actual’ or ‘natural’ visage is virtually unknown to the public, since she always appears in costume, mimicking a plurality of feminine archetypes, but also performing more androgynous roles. Because she is seemingly without origin and constantly shifting her aesthetic self-presentation, Lady Gaga is quintessentially post-modern. From a feminist perspective, the fact that Gaga’s celebrity persona amounts to little more than a collage of gender citations is potentially subversive, while from a more traditionally Marxist perspective, it is the lack of grounding contexts that makes Gaga into a pure commodity fetish without inherent use-value beyond her aesthetic appeal and wide-scale marketability. In any case, that Gaga has adopted non-essentiality and pastiche as her persona is evidence of a bourgeoning trend in popular music culture: fragmentation, self-reflexivity, and the surface play of signification – the criteria used to periodize post-modern culture – have been overtly adopted as the dominant aesthetic in what is (over-simplistically) referred to as ‘mainstream’ culture. The paradox, of course, is that to adopt post-modernity as an aesthetic is to avow the loss of any grounding principle as a meta-narrative and as a practice that can be imitated and reproduced. What we see with Gaga is a redoubling of the post-modern. Through her aestheticisation of post-modernity, Lady Gaga is able to capitalize on its marketability, while simultaneously holding up the practices of late-capitalism for critical analysis.

Website Explaining all about it. http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/2010/08/cant-read-my-poker-face-postmodern.html

Lady GaGa-Postmodern???

Lady Gaga as a Post Modern Feminist

Here is a powerpoint presentation that i found whilst researching GaGa and wether she is postmodernism, there seems to many interpretations about what people think she is and she isnt and what she offers to the industry, some people say she is the end of postmodernism, someone that tries to hard and really only cares about herself. In my opinion i think she is in a way quite cool, her 'i dont give a sh*t' attitude can be looked upon as inspirational and something i can see many of her fans 'monsters' aspiring towards. It is clear to see the influences she has taken from Bowie, another artist that rightfully can be classed as post modern. 

one review i came accross 'The woman is GALACTICALLY narcissistic. In her new video, she proves herself to yet again have not one original bone in her body, as she picks through Stanley Kubrick’s garbage – and apparently the dude who directed Gary Numan’s ’Cars video – constructing a seizure inducing monument to herself…the ‘mama monster’.'

Participation, Modification, Authenticity Disrupted, Originality??

Does knowing how to make it, or making it easy to reproduce make it less impressive


Participation-  for instance the IPunk by Daft Punk 'game' on the internet http://dothedaft.com/ relies on people remaking/ recreating the 'original' music by Daft Punk. It also gives the song an extra edge because it gives people the opportunity to go and do it themselves, it adds another dimension as its different to just listening to a song in your car. 

Modification- Dj Shadow, changing those little elements/details to create one brand new song. Basically Remix. 

Authenticity Disrupted- For instance Dan Black making the point in his music video Symphonies that he has recreated/copied/taken inspiration from something similar or infact the same.