David Buckingham

His research focuses on children's and young people's interaction with electronic media, and on media education.

Buckingham relates the development on Genre to the complex issue of ever changing identities.

Discovering the depth of Identity - Buckingham explores the development of how individuals understand the concept of identity. As a child identity is seen as a simple concept where by a child will simply differentiate between male and female genders.

According to Buckingham, as we grow older our understanding of identity becomes very complex no longer a simple method of just establishing gender.

He argues..."Genre is not simply given by the culture, rather it is in a constant process of negotiation and change"



We can apply Buckingham's theory when looking at the two music video's; Karyn Whites- Superwoman and Neyo- Miss Independant.

 



 

 

The first music video portrays the stereotypical view of females. The video shows the protagonist to be extremely domesticated, looking after her child, taking care of home responsibilities and craving her husband’s attention. The lyrics also suggest she is only there to cater to her husband and child.

In contrast the second music video portrays females in a very different light, the title and chorus of the song “Miss Independent” tells it all. It’s show how the modern women is a business woman who is concerned with her career. Also in this video the male employee is craving the attention of his female boss, which is the complete opposite of the first video.

 

Applying David Buckingham’s theory to legendary band the Bee Gees and currently active boy band JLS

To some extent the Bee Gees were an early prototype to the more recognisable boy bands of today. The band consisted of 3 initial members; Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb who were all brothers formed the group in the late 50s and early 60s. The Bee Gees defined the disco and pop era of the 60s and 70s and created the initial stereotypes for that genre from clothing to their hairstyles.
In contrast, recently established boy band JLS were formed as a result of their second placed triumph on the X-Factor reality show. The boy band consists of 4 members

Appearance wise, the Bee Gees are wearing quite flamboyant and less recognisable clothing to today’s fashion. As the Bee Gees career developed so did their attire, as they soon established their own trademark clothing of polyester flares, bell bottoms and platform shoes. However, surprisingly there isn't a stark contrast between JLS' outfits. Although they wear completely different outfit and have different hairstyles they both essentially wore tight clothing.

 

Gunther Kress

Gunter Kress- Born on the 26th November 1940
He is a professor of semiotics and education at the Institute of education of the University of London.

"Genre evolves with society"
Kress believes that genres change and new genres are developed when situations in society change and situations begin to reocur.
He believes that the sequencing to staging (Metz theory) is relevant. If genre entirely overlaps in other social processes, it means that unless we view society itself as static then neither social structures, social processes nor therefore genre are static. He argues that genre only exists in so far as a social group declares.


The basic Triangular model:  Interpreter
                                               Producer
                                               Text  
Genres first and foremost provide frameworks within which texts are produced and interpreted.He believes that texts are embedded with assumptions about ideal reader including their attitudes towards the subject matter (often class,age,gender and ethnic and political matters)


Think of two ways in which societal beliefs have changed in the last two decades. Find videos which exemplify the shifts in beliefs.

Portrayal of women:

 

2005: In this music video; the artist 50 cent portrays women to be inferior to men as they are extremely sexualised. We are taken into “Candy Shop Lane”, which is a mansion filled with large-breasted women in lingerie, analogous to the playboy mansion. 50 Cent, the only man in the video, is constantly surrounded by partially naked women. The camera switches back and forth between close-ups of the women in the mansion as they make seductive facial expressions and 50 Cent rapping outside of the mansion.
 

 2011: Six years later Nicki Minaj music video shows the complete opposite as she is the dominant one in the video and is surrounded my semi naked men. She is also rapping which something that is common with men. It can be considered as the female version of the 50cents "Candy shop".

Voilence:

This song is very disturbing as it Eminem talking about his hatred for women in particular his ex wife. The lyrics promote him planning to murder her and overall the domestic violence women suffer from their husbands/partners. In this song its about the man causing suffering to the women.

However Rihanna's music video "Man down" portrays how music videos have shifted with time, as it is about a women shooting a man who raped her the night before. The video shows casuing suffering to the male instead of the female.

Christian Metz

Christian Metz (Decemeber 1931- September 1993) was a French film theorist

 

 

He believed there are always certain structures that goes into the construction and pleasure of the cinematic spectator and that genre develops in four stages.

 

The stages are:

 

Stage 1: Experimentation- the early stages: setting up buildint blocks for future texts of the genre. This is when the generic codes and conventions are being developed.

 

Stage 2: Classic- Texts which become seen as inconic of the codes and conventions.

 

Stage 3: Parody- Media texts which mock the codes and conventions of the genre, becoming farical.

 

Stage 4: Deconstruction- Text which begin to unpick the well established codes and conventions to form hybrids and often 'uncoventional' texts from the genre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genre

What is Genre?
Genre is a class or catergory of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content or technique. For example in the music industry there are different genres such as Classical and Pop.

A text is classified in a genre through the identification of key elements (paradigms).

Paradigms may be grouped into the following:

Iconography- Main signs/symbols what you see or heard
Structure- The way a text is put together and the shape it takes
Themes- Issues and ideas it deals with
Narrative- Something formalic plots and structures, predicatbale situations, sequences, obstacles, conflics and resolutions
Identify- Similar types of characters (sometimes stereoptypes) roles personal qualities behaviour