CRITERIA
1500 words
Our video is targeted towards a primary audience of females age 15-24. After looking at the simulacrum (Baudrillard) of Olivia’s brand in real life, I saw that she is desperately trying to escape her previous brand identity of a child star by using more mature imagery and more sexual references, trying to appeal to a primary audience of 15-24. We avoided any overtly sexual imagery to avoid any moral panic (Stanley Cohen) and to keep our primary audience age lower. Conventionally, the female body has been used to provide visual pleasure (Laura Mulvey) or the male (voyeurism) while still facing wider critique for showing off their body. Female performers have always faced ‘flak’ (Chomsky) from media outlets regarding any sexual images in their music videos from Madonna’s Like a Virgin to Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus.
Olivia represents our target audience age group, making our viewers able to personally identify to her as part of the uses and gratifications theory (Katz & Blumler), since in the music video she is the stereotypical teenager, attending school. Other prominent forms of McQuails’ uses and gratifications theory are social interaction, which is applicable in my social media, and escapism. The camp, edgy look we have Olivia, the spiked chocker, and the bright-coloured wig appeal to our LGBTQ+ audience. The ‘colour pop’ of lighting and backdrop and childlike imagery of toys and frilly pink sheets are forms of escapism.
In parts of the video, Olivia is performing normative gender roles, with her look embracing the gender binary, performing the female gender (Judith Butler) with her monochrome pink outfit, girly pink-hued make-up, and low-cut top. However, there is a shift where she rejects normativity of femininity, rejecting the male gaze (Laura Mulvey’s feminist critique of sexual objectification of women in media) by leaving behind her fully pink outfit for black and wearing black bulky boots and black, dramatic eyeliner, there is clear binary opposition. Her medium-length hair has a polysemic reading, reinforcing her reluctance towards gender conformity. Her change in appearance can have a post-feminist reading, Olivia takes back her agency. The drummer’s outfit, the oversized masculine suit is a prime example of the countertype, the queering of normative gender stereotypes.
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| Our video - clear binary opposition, rejection of the male gaze |
Our secondary audience is 8-12 (tweenagers) and 25-34+ female and male. There are still some examples of the male gaze with the short skirt, high angle on the low-cut top, medium close-up of licking cupcake, and glossy lips that would appeal to the male gender. One way we appealed to an older secondary audience is the intertextual references to older films through the mise-en-scene in the bedroom scene as well as the postmodern intertextual reference (Kristeva) of Elvis Costello’s appearance, because of the ‘Pump it up’ sample. Not only is there personal identification with Costello, who in our music video acts as the parental figure, but also there is a certain knowledge of popular culture to comprehend the references (Altman’s intellectual puzzles), which could offer viewers cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu). Richard Dyer would argue that the preferred reading (Stuart Hall’s audience readings theory) that we are trying to achieve here would be restricted by cultural convention, and as we learned from our audience survey, 6 out of the 7 participants in the 35+ age group knew who Elvis Costello is and would understand the intentional view (James Baker) we had as auteurs, understanding the preferred reading (Stuart Hall).
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| Our video - Elvis Costello intertextuality (older audience appeal) |
Other postmodern intertextual references include that help us engage an older audience are Paramore’s ‘Misery Business’ and Pink’s ‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’. These feature teen characters and are set in a high school which would link to the personal identification (McQuail), however, it has elements of nostalgia as it is set in the early 2000s. The deconstructionist postmodern play on conventions comes in with us using the guitar hero instruments. I saw this being done on Lost in the Sound’s ‘Toy Boy’ and Princess Chelsea’s ‘I Love My Boyfriend’. The incorporation of genre characteristics from contrasting genres is also a common characteristic of postmodernism.
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| Lost in the Sound’s ‘Toy Boy’ and Princess Chelsea’s ‘I Love My Boyfriend’ intertextual reference in our video |
The narrative of our video is clearly defined, going against Vernallis’ point that the majority of music videos are non-narrative. There is an element of narrative enigma (Roland Barthes) during the exposition which dissipates after the disruption (Todorov) when is revealed that our hero (Campbell’s monomyth) is also our villain, blurring the narrative convention, making Olivia the false hero (Propp). We also use the symbolic code, with our character dressed in black and more punk clothes being shown as evil, and our audience assumes her behaviour on that basis alone. Contrary to Backer’s reflective view, we didn’t represent reality but exaggerated it, with the imagery of cyberbullying being portrayed on a much grander scale, with our Olivia losing millions of followers. While at the start we think that the music video touches upon serious themes of cyberbullying and harassment, the narrative is flipped and instead satirizes the portrayal of bullying in modern media. Our intentional view as auteurs is anchored by the details in the mise-en-scene and while creating Olivia’s look as well as the choice of location, grimy and edgy because of the graffiti factor, but with the use of ‘colour pop’, neon coloured lighting and pastel colours, we can anchor the dark pop genre. Genre signified is one of the ways I follow Goodwin’s key music video characteristics, which also include the notion of looking. In our video we have Olivia looking at herself in the mirror and TV, illustrating (Goodwin) the lyric ‘I hate the way I’m perceived’ which links to body image issues.
A big part of appealing to my Gen-Z audience was audience interaction and UGC (user-generated content) on Instagram. As part of my promotional campaign, I launched a competition in which my fans had to create an edit, a simulacrum of UGC (a short video filled with scenes and or pictures from the media text, using transitions and effects). These viral-style short clips are a very prominent type of UGC in Gen-Z which allows for more exposure for my music video. I have also made an official lyric video and a fan-made lyric video, which further highlights the convergence of content, and the blurring lines between consumer and producer, with the rise of web2.0 (Tim O’Rilley) and convergence culture (Henry Jenkins), with the consumer becoming more responsible for shaping the artist’s brand.
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| My socials - example of audience interaction and UGC |
I repeatedly used the term ‘livys’, the fandom name, which is a quirky way to address my fans on a more personal level, with my bio reading ‘livies headquarters 💗’, and repeated usage of hashtags like #livie #livieshq #oliviaworlddomination, typical teen speak. This is an example of audience interaction (Katz &Blumler) as I consistently directly address my fans and reply directly to the edits made of me ‘YOU GUYS ARE SO TALENTED’ ‘drop on @recordstoreday’. Everything from my Instagram handle @theoliverodrigo from the consistent use of emojis throughout aims to convey an informal and strong relationship I have formed with my tween audience. However, the main goal of my Instagram was the promotion of my new album release as well as the sale of any physical media I produced. I produced a ‘LIMITED EDITION PINK VINYL’ which audience appeal to an older and younger audience (Simon Reynold’s retromania). My brand identity is evident through my artist logo, consistent use of fonts, and repeated visuals that link directly to our music video. Throughout my promo package I have images of Olivia looking at cake but never eating it, which connotes eating issues. This is a serious social issue that many of my primary teen audience struggle with. It is a common genre convention of dark pop to tackle such darker themes as seen in Melanie Martinez’s ‘Strawberry Shortcake’. The album title ‘Brutal’ denotes how hard teen life is, appealing to our core teen audience. This is further portrayed on the digipack cover, with me using the image of her vandalizing a wall, rebelling against societal norms. The visual stamp (Goodwin) that reoccurs throughout my work include the graffiti font, the colour pink and silver star confetti.
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| My brand - visually linked, repeating visual stamps |
There is a lack of racial diversity in our music video, with none of the characters representing the BAME community. However, using costumes we are queering the classical gender roles as well as a romantic relationship being hinted at between Olivia and the guitarist. Queer baiting is something done often in the music industry by famous artists like Billie Eilish and is looked down upon but is often used as a marketing strategy to create buzz around the media product. The audience feedback we’ve gotten on this has been vastly different. This reflects, James Baker’s constructionist view which essentially states that representations are affected by the thing itself as much as they are affected by external factors such as place, age, gender, and musical preference. The is a potential oppositional reading (Stuart Hall) was that we reinforce a heteronormative narrative in our music video, linking to Chomsky’s propaganda model and the notion that any counter-hegemonic content is dismissed.
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| Our video - counter-hegemonic representations of the LGBT+ |
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