Understanding Theoretical Approaches - J

Marxism

Focuses on the the understanding that societies consist of class struggle where there is a conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat- an ownership class that controls production and a dispossessed labouring class that provides labour for production.
This can be understood as the nature of Capitalism where it produces internal tensions which would lead to its self destruction and is replaced by a new system, Socialism or Communism. Some Marxists stress the need of a revolution in order to break the oppression the proletarians' face.

Marxism has influenced other theorists who have expanded their critical thinking of sociological, economical and political issues.

Theorists such as:

Theodore Adorno and The Culture Industry: He stated that industrially produced culture "robs" people of their imagination and manipulates mass society into passivity. The culture industry delivers the "goods" so that the people then only have left over the task of consuming them.

Through mass production, everything becomes homogenised and what ever diversity remains is constituted of small trivialities. Everything becomes compressed through a process which mirrors physical reality as close as possible. Psychologically, people are then forced to believe that what they see is so real that the thought of manipulation would not be encountered.

If it has not been made apparent to how theory links into Marxism- it can be considered that the Culture Industry works as an ideological state apparatus that is controlled by the bourgeoisie and maintains the capitalist system through consumerism and and alienating the proletarians into not realising their oppression- thus they remain passive.

Antonio Gramsci and Hegemony: He used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others (e.g. bourgeois hegemony). This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and 'natural'.

Hegemonies would use media as an ideological apparatus in order to enforce the hegemony by creating fear of deference from the established norm of imperial dominance.

The idea of of Ideological State apparatuses is also linked to the theorist Louis Althusser. He believed that it was necessary to conceive of how society makes the individual in its on image.

Noam Chomsky and Manufacturing Consent: He did an analysis of the news media, argued that the mass media "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions and self-censorship"

Feminism

Aims to define, achieve and defend equal political, economical, social and cultural rights for women. It also focuses on understanding the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experience; it has developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues such as the social construction of sex and gender.

A feminist theoretical approach is what we hope to involve in our music video in some form. In order to do so, we carried out further research into feminist film/media text theory and came across the concepts of the British feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey.

The Male Gaze, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: She coined the term "male gaze" in 1975 and believes that in film and other visual media texts, inevitably put the spectator in a masculine (heterosexual) subject position with the female figure on screen as an object of desire. Features of the male gaze could be instances where the camera lingers on the curves and close up of the female body, and events that would occur to women are presented largely in the context of the mans reaction to these events. The nature of the male gaze enforces patriarchal values, as the theorist Jonathan Schroeder states "to gaze implies more than to look at- it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze"

Example of the male gaze in a music video

Lady Gaga - "Bad Romance"

Psychoanalytic theory

Founded by Sigmund Freud who believed that people could be cured by making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motivations, thus gaining insight. The aim of psychoanalysis therapy is to release repressed emotions and experiences and is commonly used to treat depression and anxiety disorders.

The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following:

• besides the inherited constitution of personality, a person's development is determined by events in early childhood;

• human attitude, mannerism, experience, and thought is largely influenced by irrational drives; irrational drives are unconscious;

• attempts to bring these drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defense mechanisms;

• conflicts between conscious and unconscious, or repressed, material can materialise in the form of mental or emotional disturbances, for example: neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression etc.;

• the liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the conscious mind 

This is also a theory we are going to involve in our music videos, because understanding of such can help us build a better narrative in relation the star performance, and the rest of the content. Connections like this are significant to our music video because we interpret the song to be very emotional and personal to the listener so being aware of psychoanalysis helps us to understand how we can create and present the emotion in our music video.