Media

For media homework (23/9/09) we were issued to view a music video and of a specific genre and give a textual analysis... so without further ado.

I decided to look at the hip-hop genre, despite it not being a personal favourite of mine, i considered that this genre it's own specific characteristics.

The video I looked at was R Kelly - Ignition (Remix), the video abides by the stereotype you would associate with a video like this with it's voyeuristic imagery, with women with more skin on show than clothing, people turning up in limousines and fast,flash cars, the people in a club dancing whilst drinking expensive liqour. It comes across as the artist is massaging his own ego by almost gloating at the lifestyle he's leading.

The lyrics in the song seem not to have relationship with the visuals however there a few lines in the song that reflects what's happening in the video, with the line "i'm like so what i'm drunk", and throughout the video, there is visuals of people consuming alcohol.

The relationship between the music and visuals, throughout the song, there is a slow pace to the beat, and the visuals have the people im the club dancing, but dancing slowly, almost to imply that thewy are going to be a long night, however at various points, for example in the build upp to the chorus, the pace picks up, and we see different shots at a far more rapid rate than at any other point of the video.

The record companny have the artist partying throughout the video, showing his appeal to a younger generation (say mid to late teens) as it shows them that he enjoys and does similar activities to them, this opens up an entire new range of customer for his record. Compare this to his other records and it furthers the point of him targeting a younger generation, as he has collaborated with some of the big up and coming stars on records.

In the video there is a sense that the women in the video are put on sexual display, we get this idea through the selected costumes for females in the video and the way it has them dancing imply this.

The intertextual refernces in this video is of the song being a remix to another on the same album, also in the video they promote certain sports teams through wearing there jerseys, hats etc.

The video is slightly narrative-based as it follows a story of a night-out, however there is no set storyline to the video, and it seems to be more performance based than anything due to all the dancing.

In conclusion i would say the video follows all the stereotypes i would expect a video like this to consist of, the artist on an ego-trip showing how wealthy he may be and showing lots of close-ups of him , voyeuristic imagery and the women on sexual display.