Riptide

Chloe Valentine

Riptide - Vance Joy

Genre and Audience

Indie is a lowkey genre that was popular in the late 70’s. They have a niche audience, and feature some artists like Navana. And the Smiths. It is normally referred to as alternative rock/ guitar based.  A stereotypical convention to an Indie music video would be guitars and white middle-aged males.

Indie is a small independent pop group, record label, or film company. Vance Joy does fit into the Indie genre it’s quite acoustic and calm.

Narrative and Iconography

The music video uses an interpretive style, this means the lyrics correspond with the images/ objects. 

It has one short narrative, which includes the process of the woman deteriorating as her appearance becomes less and less glamorous.                                 .

The first shot shows a female the dentist as the first line is “I was scared of dentists” it creates and shows the literal meaning. This makes the audience take the literal meaning for mostly every verse, it shows an image that connects with the lyrics which engages the audience as they see physical objects/ images.

Representation

Females are represented stereotypically in this music video as they are seen to be tortured, abused and sexualised. The ongoing motif n the video is abuse towards women as there is a mid-shot of a female tied up to a tree. The establishing shot of a female in a dentist, the close up shot shows he facial expressions to be scared as her eyes are wide open. The female is shown as an object as she’s seen to be taking off her swimsuit. The audience is objectifying her as we look on to see her (camera). She doesn’t reveal her face at all, which creates a sense that we are spying on her as she gets undressed. This is further deepened as there is a shot of a red book “Techniques of photographing girls” which disturbs the audience.

The lyrics of “taken away to the dark side “shows the female being abducted, all these images/shots have a deep meaning behind them. There is a strong representation that females are objects and are weak.

Theory

 

Postmodernism- This video shows a reference to a stereotypical horror movie setting (set in a graveyard). As normally, in a horror movie the females are always abducted or end up dying first. The music video refers to the film directors Wes Anderson and David Lynch. Lynch’s popular movie called “Blue Velvet” it was filmed in the 1980’s but yet feel like it’s set in the 1950’s. This is similar to “Riptide” as it has a old-fashioned vibe due to makeup, costume and props. Wes Anderson was referenced as the shots are filmed from a bird’s eye view and he follows specific shape and layout to the objects, this is shown when he lays out the American dollar.

Sembiotics

o  “All my friends are turning green ” – This can indicate that money are his only friends but also connotes envy and jealousy.

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