Lesson Write Up - 23rd Oct

Can apply any theory to any text

• generic reading (based on genre)
• narrative
• feminist
• representational
• stereotypes

Genre is easy to understand

Strengths of Genre Theory:

• media experts use it to study media texts, the media industry uses it to develop and market texts and audiences use t to decide what they want to consume

Genre Development & Transformation:

• over the years genres develop and change as the wider society that produce them also changes, a process that is known as generic transformation
• Christian Metz (1974) argued that genres go through a typical cycle of changes
• experimental
• classic
• parody
• deconstruction

Music videos medium is intended to appeal directly to youth subcultures, reinforcing generic elements of musical genres
Called pop-promos used for promotion of the band or artist
Music video's are post modern texts, main purpose is to promote a stars persona (Dyer 1975)
Don't have to be literal representations of lyrics

Post modernism:
- usually refers to industrialisation but now links to digital technology
- label/name given to a historical era within society and culture
- no definition, but can define things that have post-modern features
-label of the era we are living in now

In terms of genre, there are narrative and performance and some combine both
Intertextual referencing

• others include themes which may fit around lyrics of song or society
• conventions stay the same but style changes between the genres
• music videos are known for being experimental and controversial

Theme = what the song is about, the underlying ideology or idea

David Bordwell (1989)
-anything can happen in any genre

• Horror - basically modern fairy tales
• Fear of the Unknown - monster is the 'monstrous other' anything that is scary is foreign and different
• Sex = Death - sex is immoral and must be punished, werewolf movies, metaphors for puberty
• Breakdown of Society -  post-apocalyptic movies are about our fear of the breakdown of society, the collapse of civilisation
• Duality of man/personal journey - conflict between civilised side and his savage primal instincts
• Segregation & alienation -  two opposing cultures or beings going through a struggle to survive

Some music videos have themes for a more youthful audience such as -

• teen angst
• rebellion (conformity vs non-conformity)
• romance
• sex
• nostalgia (innocence of youth)
• nihilism (belief there is no future)
• coming of age rituals
• tribalism (popularity vs unpopularity)
• bullying
• juvenile delinquency
• currency of 'cool'
• hedonism (living for pleasure)
• friendship

Other themes in music videos -

• war
• crime
• poverty
• capitalism
• racism

Genres are not fixed - they constantly change and evolve over time
David Buckingham (1993) argues that genre is not simply given by the culture constant process of change
Jacques Derida 'the law of the law of genre is precisely a principle of contamination, a law of impurity'