1. POSTMODERN MUSIC VIDEO ESSAY
Katy Perry- Chained To The Rhythm is an example of a postmodern music video, it was
released February 10th 2017 and was featured on her new album ‘Witness’. The video was
produced by Max Martin and Ali Payami and was directed by Mathew Cullen.
Music videos can be postmodern through a number of factors which may be featured in the
music video, these include irony, intertextuality, pastiche, parody and fragmentation. There
are a number of artists in the industry today who portray postmodernity throughout their
videos however Katy Perry’s video to her new song stood out the most and gave me a
number of postmodern factors to talk about.
Firstly, postmodernism is a way of thinking about culture, philosophy, art and other
meanings. However, in relation to media postmodern media rejects the idea that any media
product or text is of any greater value than another and that the distinction between media
and reality has collapsed and we now live in a ‘reality’ defined by images and
representation.
In relation to my case study, the video features intertextuality and is mainly reference the
political issues currently taking place is the US. The first scene in the music video is people
walking into a theme park called ‘Oblivia’, seeing as the video is highly political it is believed
‘oblivia’ is meant to mean ‘oblivious’ and is suggesting that people are unaware of the
political problems current. Another scene which stood out was a sign stating ‘The Great
American Dream Drop’ which clearly has reference to the American Dream and suggests
that society today has made it harder for people to achieve the Great American Dream
whereas before people were able to work hard and in return receive this big dream
everyone wished for. One scene also has intertextual reference to the Disney film Sleeping
Beauty where the female character cuts her finger on a sharp object in this case a rose
thorn, this scene is portraying a message to the audience that although something may look
good it will always have a negative side effect.
The next two scenes have a very obvious reference to political issues and President Trump.
There is a scene featured in the video of characters being thrown over a wall into another
area we do not see, to me this clearly has reference to Trumps promise policy of building a
wall between two countries and may be the singers way of mocking his promise. Another
scene sees a sign stating ‘bombs away’ with bombs flying all in frame of the camera, this
highlights the threats beings thrown between the US and Korea and suggests the singer is
trying to get these issue across to her audience to spark debates and see if any solutions can
be found to resolve the problem.
To conclude, postmodern music videos like this one are good to cause debates and get
opinions across to an audience although some may be seen as controversial however it
allows an audience to think about issues they may not realise are a problem which could
spark a positive or negative reaction.
