Timed Essay 2

 2) Explain how media language in music video incorporates viewpoints and ideologies. Refer to one of the music videos you have studied to support your answer.

Radiohead’s Burn the Witch music video reflects the band’s ideology and messages they want to promote through the political song. The audience of Radiohead are middle-aged and older men with political, left-wing views as this mirrors Radiohead’s viewpoints. The band are known for their political and societal commentary.

The intertextual references in Burn the Witch are importantly linked to the audience as the references to The Wicker man film and Camberwick Green will be understood by the older audience, likely allowing them to relate more to the ideology being represented. If audiences understand the obvious narrative link to the Wicker man, they will recognise the unique ideas of cults and the dangers of extreme social groups and groupthink ideologies. The video expresses the dangers of the traditional political viewpoints of these social groups and how barbaric behaviour is still present today in how we treat people. This representation and message parallels the band’s liberal political views as right-wing groups are frequently associated with discriminative behaviour and individualistic ideas.

Burn the Witch has a linear narrative music video structure, showing an inspector looking around a village. Representations in the music video are evident in showing Radiohead’s politics. For example, a ‘model village’ mirrors the village of middle-class, white, conservative civilians and their cult-like actives. The contrast of being a model village and sacrificing the inspector portrays a political and negative representation of this social group. Radiohead are showing the contrast between how people want to be seen and their dark secrets. The end of the video shows the community sacrificing the inspector, giving the audience an impression of these stereotypically ‘civilised’ social groups being dangerous and evil.

Areas of the music video suggest authoritarianism as people are locked inside their houses and images of nooses are seen, showing a corrupt side to the ‘model village’ originally shown at the beginning. More subtle techniques are used to perpetuate the ideology throughout the video, with colour design being bright and emphasising the positive way these groups are usually represented, contrasting the dark narrative. Another detail is the only characters with expressions are the victims who will be burned as sacrifices. This gives the other characters expressionless faces and makes the video seem more sinister whilst making the audience feel sympathetic for the victims of the social group. These details show an obvious viewpoint of the video and it relates to the dark lyrics of the song which display ideas of cults.

Representation theory would suggest that the middle-class, conservative social group is being represented in a negative way through their action in the music video. They are being represented by the band Radiohead which is likely because the band wants to promote their views and maybe oppose the traditional and well-accepted way of thinking whilst giving their audience another political perspective. The representations would likely lead to Radiohead fans having a preferred reading of the text as their views will match the representations and messages being conveyed. Oppositional readings are likely to come from the social group being represented negatively; middle-class, white, conservative people would reject the point of view being shown.

Fandom theory of Radiohead links to identity theory. The fans of Radiohead are already likely to have very political and liberal views due to the songs that Radiohead make. Their identity would be based some what on the band and their views, making the messages in Burn the Witch more affective to the target audience and allowing Radiohead to promote their political views to a wider, accepting audience.