Kwabs Genre Case Study

1. Media Theory in relation to Genre – Kwabs | Perfect Ruin
Chandler – The Marxist theory put forward by Chandler suggests that genres go through ‘cycles’ of popularity. This
links to the genre of ‘Perfect Ruin’ as the genre of soul has become dormant in contemporary media. As Chandler
suggests, the genre has not disappeared but rather become less prominent. Chandler’s theory can also be used to
analyse the way in which the conventions of the genre of soul have developed since the 1960s, when soul was at it’s
peak. For example, the use of setting in the music video for ‘Perfect Ruin’ is contemporary to the soul genre. In Ray
Charles’ ‘Hit The Road Jack’, the music video is purely performance based, showing how in comparison to Perfect
Ruin, music videos have changed. This is further supported by David Buckingham’s media theory that genre is a
‘constant process of negotiation and change’
Steve Neale’s theory on genre and it’s relation to the audience suggests that the pleasure the
audience receive from the viewership of the music video is due to ‘repetition and difference’. An
example of repetition being used to maintain viewership is in a cartoon like ‘Looney Tunes’ where the
character of Wile E. Coyote attempts to catch and eat the Roadrunner. The audience know he will
never be successful and so find his failures as comedic. A good example of difference is in Quentin
Tarantino’s Kill Bill, in which the protagonist of a somewhat action/thriller film is a female, rather than
a male (stereotypical to the genre). However, Tarantino has also done this in the film ‘Jackie Brown’ in
which the main character the audience root for is a middle-aged black woman. The idea of difference
is that it is challenging the stereotypes or conventions associated with a genre. This can be further
supported by Gunther Kress who suggests that ‘genre is a kind of text that derives its form from the
structure of a (frequently repeated) social occasion, with its characteristic participants and their
purposes. In relation the Kwabs’ Perfect Ruin music video, it is a use of repetition as it is looks to
maintain the audience and please them by sticking to the conventions linked with the genre of soul.
This can be seen through the mise-en-scene of using desolate locations, showing loneliness, and the
lyrics themselves which are very conventional of the soul genre.
Jacques Derrida argues that ‘a text can not belong to no genre, it cannot be without a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, and that
there is no genreless text’. This suggests that texts can not be made to bear no relationship to a genre at all. In Kwabs’ Perfect Ruin, this statement is
supported. For example, the music video looks to take Soul into a new direction but still falls trap to some of the generic conventions of classic soul.
In another way, it supports the statement by showing that despite the ambiguity of the music video, a viewer will always have an opinion on what
genre they think the video falls into.