Music Video Analysis

I have never really thought of music videos as films that could be analyzed but they definitely are. Music videos can make or break a song. There have been times where I don't like a song but after watching the music video I find myself changing my mind. The reverse is also true. I have loved a song and had it ruined by the music video. It doesn't match the image I have running in my head and from then on the official video that I didn't like is all I can see. I also didn't know many of the terms that go along with analyzing films. Shot, editing, focus, genre and scene were all pretty self explanatory but auteur, diegesis and mise-en-scene were foreign ideas to me. After learning that auteur is french for author that one made more sense but there is more to it. It is the ideas the author puts into it. In music videos it isn't always the artist. It can be the director. Diegesis is the subtle things everyone sees but doesn't really see. Symbols in the video and angles of the camera show the audience the story without explaining it. It makes the whole video more emotional. Mise-en-scene is not just a word a can't pronounce but a story put into one shot. At any given point of a video there can be a mise-en-scene. Like the diegesis, the symbols in the background make up the mise-en-scene. The details can tell a whole story without any words or movement.

I presented Already Gone by Sugarland this Friday. I had to look through a lot of videos until I found one that I liked and had everything I needed. Already Gone had very obvious and simple symbols but that's what I wanted. I don't quite get what I'm supposed to be looking for in videos but I needed to start somewhere. In school we are taught what to look for in books and I can find metaphors in lyrics. Finding metaphors and symbols in videos is a whole different story. The new medium is harder. Like many novels, the symbols are subtle and can be hard to find. I'm excited to see where it goes. I've never thought of taking a film class but so far I like it.

Communication: Bringing People Together from First Words

Mass media is an ever changing phenomena that has changed peoples lives over and over again. Mass media hasn't always been apart of human life. Mass media today is all electronic interface. When someone wants to spread information they put it on the internet where millions of people can see it. Mass media used to be spread through books, newspapers, and even plays. Print and performances where the interfaces for mass media but technology has changed that. Technology has allowed the media to reach even more people and change more lives. Mass media through technology has allowed the human race to break down the elite culture and create a community that everyone can be a part of.

Mass media and technology hasn't always been part of human life but communication has. People have communicated through speech and script for years before videos and other technological medium came to the public. Communication has many definitions but Mass Media Mass Culture defines communication as "a process involving the sorting, selecting, and sharing of symbols to help a receiver elicit from his or her own mind a meaning similar to that in the mind of the communicator" (Wilson-Wilson 12). Communication is a huge part of the human world and it is always changing. People have been talking forever. Before babies can even talk they communicate with facial expressions and as they grow up they become able to talk to more and more people. This exponential growth of communication has extended over the world now. Jeremy Rifkin brings up this point in his lecture. "With a forager/hunter societies communication only extended to the local tribe in shouting distance...When we went to the great hydraulic agricultural civilisation script allowed us to extend [communication]...We have gone from empathy in blood ties to empathy in religious association ties to empathy based on national identification..." (Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization). Mass media has made it possible to connect to people all over the world. The way we use mass media has helped as well. Communication using symbols has evolved too. In the early ages communication, if not done in person, was though books. "[Before the 14th century] most books were handwritten... In the 15th century the German printer Johannes Gutenberg invented the process of movable type" (Wilson-Wilson 22). In a few centuries books became more popular when the process for making them became easier. Since then, the world has come even further and invented a way to connect through technology.  "Television was invented as a potential replacement for the radio by adding pictures to sound" (Wilson-Wilson 29).  Technology has changed the way people communicate. It has also impacted peoples choices. When there is more information available people start to see controversial topics in a new light.

With the advanced of technological communication, elite culture is diminished. Elite culture is the idea that there are some arts or leisure activities that only a certain group of people can enjoy. Back in time, the elite culture was families with money. These families were able to afford to go to shows and buy art where the common folk might only have a folk story or two to pass down. Education used to be a big part of elite culture. Only the rich were able to get an education and everyone else worked. "But public education paid for from taxation, compulsory to everybody and free at the point of delivery - that was a revolutionary idea... [opposed people] said it's not possible for many street kids and working class children to benefit from public education, they're incapable of learning to read and write and why are we spending time on this?" (Robinson, Changing Paradigms). This gap has since been closed but for so long education belonged to the rich. The rich and poor were always on different ends of the spectrum but technology has allowed society to blend these two groups.  In Press Play Pause, Moby says "50 years ago, people didn't make things. People would go to photography exhibits. They would go to record fairs. They would watch movies. Now everyone is a photographer. Everyone is a musician. Anyone can make a film". Today people take more pictures with their Iphones than a camera. Movies can also be recorded on phones and a simple computer can make music. Almost everyone is equal. There is still a separation in some cultures where technology  is still reserved for the rich and the poor cannot afford it but most of the world is able to share art. This sharing not only eliminates the elite culture but makes way for a new community. A community where anyone can share their art and ideas with the rest of the world. Napster is a music sharing site that has played a part in making the music industry one large community. Sean Parker, co-creator of Napster, tells interviewers "the vision behind Napster, in the very early stages, was to just come up with a system that made sharing of mp3's so easy that a housewife or grandmother in Iowa could do it". Music is one of the biggest communities. People come together for concerts and now they can share music online. Technology made this sharing possible for local people and people miles away. It doesn't matter where the listener is, they can still connect with the music and others who like the same music.

The community created through mass communication and mass media is different than the community of the past. People today worry that this new community doesn't work and will separate people more than bring them together. In the documentary Craigslist Joe, Joseph Garner relays what people think about this community and sets out to prove them wrong. "Some say we have lost the sense of community that used to carry us through tough times" (Joseph Garner, Craigslist Joe). Joe spends the whole month of December relying on kindness from strangers he meets on Craigslist the website. He shows the world that there are still good people who want to help others. They help Joe survive a cold winter and make it back to his family safely. There is still room for improvement in the community but it is there. This community has become peoples identity. Slavoj Zizek says "but I claim in today's capitalism more and more the tendency is to bring the two dimensions together in one and the same cluster. So that when you buy something it is your anti-consumerist duty to do something for others for environment and so on, is already included onto it..." (Zizek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce). Zizek is saying that the community doesn't extend to only consumers now. The consumers now want a charity or donation to be included in the price of their goods. That way they are helping themselves and their immediate economy as well as less fortunate people in other countries. It may not be the best solution but it connects people. Community is all about connects and the widespread media makes people want to help. The media advertises the problem and companies create products that people want and will give a small portion of the profit to the problem. It might not solve everything but it gets people thinking and involved even if it is the least amount possible. Media has began making connections all over the world. People connect over ideas projected over the internet. Roman Krznaric Believes these connections are just the beginning. "I think we need to be more adventurous in who we try to empathise with. I think we need to empathise with those in power [as well as the misfortunate]. We need to understand how those in power...think about the world and live their lives... Only then are we going to be able to develop effective strategies for social, political and economic transformation" (Krznaric, The Power of Outrospection). Mass media encourages people around the world to connect and try to understand each other. It is a challenge but it is where the world is headed.

Technology has helped the human race in more than one way but communicating is huge. The impact it has already made and the potential it has to change everything is making the world a bigger community. Mass media is just widespread communication. When people know what is happening they are more likely to empathize and do something to help or be involved. Communities in the past may have been close knit and helpful then but now the whole world can be connected. Technology gives people the missing piece. Before there was distance and language barriers between people but technology eliminates them. Online translators let people on opposite sides of the earth talk like they are in the same room. There is so much that has changed and so much that will change as technology and mass media grows. 

Sympathy vs. Empathy

Sympathy and empathy are often thought to be the same emotion but they are incredibly different. Sympathy is feeling for someone else's loss whereas empathy is the ability to understand and share someone else's emotions. Empathy helps us connect to people where sympathy cannot. In Zizek's lecture, he talks about the idea of donating to less fortunate or buying something that is advertised to help someone. "You don't just buy a coffee in the consumer act. You buy your redemption from only being a consumer... you fulfill a series of ethical duties" (Zizek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce) . This charity isn't a bad thing but it make people think they did their part and they are done. It's putting a bandage over a bullet wound. It is out of sight and you did something but the problem is still there. Charity comes out of sympathy instead of empathy. If people helped out of empathy they would have to experience what these other people are going through. They would have to go grow coffee beans grown under awful conditions. After they understand what these people go through they can help fix it. Krznaric's lecture on The Power of Outrospection explains how he believes this idea would help us connect with out fellow humans. "We need, for example, empathy museums. A place which is not about dusty exhibits... but an experiential and conversational public space. Where you walk in and in the first room there is a human library where you can borrow people for conversation" (Krznaric, The Power of Outrospection). These empathy museums would allow us to understand each other and connect on a different level. Someone who sees the world one way might hear a story from someone they have nothing in common with and it changes their whole perspective.

Everyone is able to experience empathy at some level. Rifkin studied babies and came up with the conclusion that we all have to experience empathy. "We are actually soft wired to actually experience an other's plights as if we are experiencing it ourselves" (Rifkin, The Empathic Civilzation). People are programed from birth to feel empathy. It is how people communicate before developing a common language. Non-verbal cues and facial expressions can carry whole conversations and convey complex emotions. Others are able to understand this through empathy. They are able to perceive the emotion, understand, and even feel it through empathy. This connects everyone even when people are constantly being separated into different categories. "We still educate children by batches; we put them through the system by age group... Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are" (Robinson,Changing Education Paradigms). Age is not the only thing these kids have in common. The opposite could be true as well. Maybe age is the only thing these kids have in common. The point is that it doesn't matter how people are grouped. Everyone can share connections.