Audience

Stuart Hall - Reception theory 

The reception theory states that media texts are encoded by the producer meaning that whoever produces the text fills the product with values and messages. 
The text is then decoded by spectators.
Different spectators will decode the text in different ways, not always in the way the producer intended. 

Producer encodes

message/meaning.

Dominant or preferred meaning         Negotiated meaning           Oppositional meaning 

Our negotiated or oppositional meaning van be changed through experiences and knowledge and reject the film. For example, a trained doctor could watch a medical/hospital based programme and have an oppositional reading due to seeing that the events that are taking place within the programme are un-real.

Gender, age and social class can also affect the way that we read the media texts.

Dominant 

• The dominant reading of a text is that the audience view the media text in the way the producer intended intended.
• The audience agree with the ideology and message behind the text.
• The audience will view the message in the way the producer wanted them to.
• The ideal consumption has been met and the institution happy.

Negotiated

• This is a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, the audience accepts the views of the producer but also has their own input and understanding in relation to the text.
• They do not agree or disagree, they however can see the point being made in relation to the reading yet still have their own opinion.
• e.g. They understand what the institution want the message to be and how they are supposed to consume the text, however they do not fully conform with the message. 

Oppositional 

• The audience rejects the preferred reading and create their own reading of the text.
• The audience reject the meaning fully as they do not agree with the message created for the audience. 
• The audience reject the message fully and interoperate the text in the wrong way, they may be offended, upset and fail to see the intended message from the institution.  

In relation to My Bloody Valentine - Soon...

Due to the lack of knowledge in terms of knowing what the producers intended meaning for the music video was. The lack of narrative within this video also makes it difficult however due to the editing of the video it could force different views into different people. For example the transparent effect used on the band members creates a very empty mood however allows the video to be layered creating an atmospheric tone. The transparency could relate to the empty emotions of the band which reflects the unhappy nature of the lyrics. 

  

Narrative

Sven Carlsson - 3 areas of narrative structure 

Sven Carlsson states that music videos fall into two areas. Conceptual clips and performance clips. He claims that binary opposites push the narrative of a video forward.

The performance element can fall under either, song performance, dance performance or instrumental performance. This performer is being made into a commercial exhibitionist who is selling the product to the audience as some fans will aspire to be like them and buy their products and imitate their style.  

The video for My Bloody Valentine - Soon does not conform to this theory fully as it only involves performance elements rather than any conceptual clips. This however is heavily distorted through the way of which it was edited, creating a very disorientating feel to this video reflecting the music itself. This video incorporate elements of song performance, dance performance and instrumental performance but is dominated through shots of guitars due to this instrumental performance being a very important aspect of the music.  

 

The lack of conceptual clips within this video reflects the style of music due to its unconventional nature and its lack of story. This therefore does not fully conform to Sven Carlsson's theory. However, it does conform in the sense that this video feature performance clips in the form of song, dance and instrumental. 

  Tim O'Sullivan - Culture and Society 

Tim's theory states that through careful mediation, media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves. Not usually our personal stories, but the stories of us as a culture or set of cultures.

He suggests that narratives have a common structure, starting with the establishment of plot and genre. 
For example, the disorientation and unconventional style of this video could suggest the fighting against the norm in other ways other than music due to fans of this genre generally do not conform to a common or 'normal' society. 
However, due to this videos lack of conceptual clips this theory is much harder to directly relate. Although the distorted effect could relate to the strong stereotypical drug use of fans of this music, and the musicians itself as it almost appears to be a hallucinogenic drug trip while watching the band perform. 

Bordwell and Thompson - Story and plot

This theory states that the quality of a music video is created through the relationship between story and plot. It will consist of three events...

• Inferred events - things that are assumed by the audience
• Explicitly shown events - what is seen within the video
• Non-diegetic material - soundtracks/text on screen etc...

This theory does not relate to the My Bloody Valentine - Soon music video as due being only performance their is no performance to the video therefore inferred events are not directly related due to the lack of story. 

However, there are inferred events in the sense that they will have had to set up their equipment and practice and write the songs. The performance itself is therefore the explicitly shown event which is the video itself. These therefore suggest that this video does conform to Bordwell and Thompsons theory. The music itself would be the non-digetic material as the performance is just a mime of the recorded track that is played over. 

   

Genre

Genre

• Everything belongs to a genre, it is presented to the audience through codes and conditions. 

• A genre is something that we can categorise from typical codes and conventions through things such as narrative and mise-en-scene. 

• Genre is a critical tool that helps us study texts and audience responses to texts by dividing them into categories based on common elements. 

• Genre conventions inform the text which are produced by institutions who are aware of what makes a particular genre. This is a cultural awareness between the institutions and audience.
• Archetype = Original stereotype of a genre.

• Comedy and animation are not genres, they are styles or treatments.

Daniel Chandler 2001

He argues that the word genre comes form the french word for 'kind' or 'class'. The term is widely used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory to refer to a distinctive type or 'text'. 

Barry Keith Grant 1995

All genres have sub-genres

This means that they are divided up into more specific categories that allow audiences to identify them specifically by their familiar and what become recognisable characteristics.

Steve Neale 1995

He suggests that genres are dynamic and evolve over time. They are not systems, they re processes of systematisation, this is often dependant of the time period of which they were created.  

Jason Mittel 2001

He argues that genres are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience, and cultural practices as well.

Industries use genre to sell products to audiences. Meda producers use familiar codes and conventions that very often make cultural references to their audience knowledge of society, other texts.

Genre allows audiences to make choices about what products they want to consume through acceptance in order to fulfil a particular pleasure.

Martha Reeves and The Vandellas - Nowhere to run (1965)
Video is in a car factory which represents the genre of Soul and Motown due to this being dominated by black artist. Therefore the video represents the ideologies of a black member of society during the time having to do manual labour and have a hard life in order to make a living. The ideologies of this genre therefore reflect what live is like at the time of which the song is made, this is reinforced through the video itself. 

Rick Altman 1999
Emotional pleasures: The emotional pleasures offered to audiences of genre films are particularly significant when they generate a strong audience response.
Visceral Pleasure: 'gut' responses and are defined by how the film's stylistic construction elicits a physical effect upon an audience. 
Intellectual Puzzles: Certain film genres such as the thriller or the 'whodunit' offer the pleasure in trying to unravel a mystery or puzzle.

David Bordwell 1989
'Any theme may appear in any genre'
Horror films, for example, are basically just modern fairy tales and often act as morality plays in which people who break society's rules are punished.
Fear of the unknown - the monster is the 'monstrous other' i.e. anything that is scary because it is foreign or different.
Sex = Death - in horror movies, especially Slasher movies, sex is immoral and must be punished.
Duality of man - the conflict between man's civilised and his savage, primal instincts. 
Segregation and alienation - two opposing cultures or beings going through a struggle to survive.

David Buckingham 1993
Argues that 'genre is not simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change.

Jacques Derrida
A postmodern theorist who states "the law of the law of genre...is precisely a principle of contamination, a law of impurity.
For example, short films and music videos are in the process of genre cross-over. 
Some narrative videos borrow from the conventions of short films and in fact are short films. 

The Strengths of Genre theory 
Everybody uses genre theory and understands it. Media experts use it to study texts, the media industry uses it develop and market texts and audiences use it to decide what texts to consume. 
The potential for the same concept to be understood by producers, audiences and scholars makes genre a useful critical tool. It's accessibility as a concept also means that it can be applied across a wide range of texts. 

Music Videos
Music video is a medium intended to appeal directly to youth subcultures by reinforcing generic elements of musical genres.
They are called pop-promos as they are used to promote a band or artist.
Music video are postmodern texts whose main purpose is to promote a star persona (Dyer, 1975)
They dont have to be literal representations of the song or lyrics.

Andrew Goodwin's 6 features of Music video

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in metal videos)
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are represented with images. (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music. 
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work. (a visual style)
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, mirrors, stages, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
6. There are often intertextual reference (to films, TV programmes, other music videos etc)

Hedonism - living purely for pleasure 

My Bloody Valentine - Soon

My Bloody Valentine fall under the alternative genre of Shoegaze which incorporates loud guitar riffs with melodic vocals in order to create a noisy atmospheric feel. Shoegazing (also known as Shoegaze) is a sub-genre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980's and reached peak popularity in the early 1990.This therefore conforms to Barry Keith Grant's theory due to the band being of an alternative sub-genre as he states that all genres have sub-genres.This allows the audience to divided up into more specific categories that allow audiences to identify them specifically by their familiar features and what become recognizable characteristics. these recognizable characteristic fall under mise-en-scene as they consist of everything from clothing to hair cuts, to instruments choice. The bands long hair and over-sized clothing has become a convention of this alternative genre of music, as has the use of the fender Jazzmaster and fender jaguar and have almost become a stereotype of Shoegaze music, and almost a modern cliche. However due to My Bloody valentine pioneering the genre, the cliche does not apply to them.This also relates to Steve Neale's point of genres evolving over time as this alternative rock genre has evolved into many sub-genres that did not exist in the past, such as Shoegaze. My Bloody Valentine themselves set the archetype of this genre of music and therefore have basically created the genre itself and therefore created the codes and conventions that are associated with it and them as a band. This therefore suggest that everything the band do is conventional of the genre due to the band pioneering it. However they still follow many conventions of alternative rock. 

Representation

Tessa Perkins - Stereotypes

Tessa Perkins states that stereotypes are not always negative and are not always about minority groups or the less powerful. However, they are not always false either as they have had to have been based on a certain experience or real view that would have led to this stereotype being made. These stereotypes can also be held about one’s own group and have the  ability to change due to not being rigid or unchanging.

The use of Fender Jazzmasters and Jaguars through the mise-en-scene have become a stereotype in itself for the shoegazing/alternative genre of music pioneered by My Bloody Valentine. Both of these guitars are shown repeatedly throughout the ‘Soon’ music video showing this to conform to this stereotype which is almost conventional. This genre of music is completely dominated by Fender guitars in terms of sounds and general aesthetic styling of these guitars and bass guitars. This is also the case for the bands clothing ass it is over-sized and generally unconventional styles which reflects the music itself and the music video.  

         My Bloody Valentine are portraying themselves as unconventional and fighters of the norm within their mise-en-scene and their general ideologies within relation to music and way of life. This is suggested due to them not trying to confirm to any style or ideology due to them being themselves  both personally and musically. This self expression and being themselves is carried on through their music and this music video.

Richard Dyer - Star Theory

'Stars are commodities that are produced by institutions' 

A star is a constructed image not a real person, they create a persona that is desirable to a target audience but is not actually a true representation of themselves. It is a constructed identity and ideology to make society want to consume them.

My Bloody Valentine however do not fully conform to this theory as this unconventional musical genre and ideology they are famous for fights this norm and the idea that music corporate, and only for financial gain. They are not constructed and are allowed to be themselves through musical expression and performance. This therefore does not conform to Richards Dyer theory of them being constructed by institutions. However, the band do conform in the sense that they are considered stars within their musical genre, and are looked at as inspiration and role models for fans of this genre. This could therefore suggest that they have been institutionalized in order to appeal to their target audience in order to sell their products, and therefore make money. 
Although this dishonest, money minded ideology is what this genre is against. It fights the norm, so therefore this is more unlikely to be the case and they are doing this as a from of self-expression rather than to make money through becoming a brand.    

Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory in relation to My Bloody Valentine - Soon