Riptide

Question 1

What’s the context for Riptide?

Answer 1

• The genre is indie folk pop
• He pulls from surrealist film, in a way that explores sexual nature and violence.
• It follows a dream- like logic.
• The seemingly low budget is a unique style of the music video but could be an economic decision rather than a creative one.

Question 2

What could you say about the narrative?

Answer 2

• Montage editing.
• Einstein’s concept of ‘intellectual montage’ where new ideas emerge from the collision of images and generate new meanings.
• The video rejects a clear narrative, deliberately lacking coherence, referring surrealist or avant-garde cinema.
• There’s an Overt Graphical Representation of the lyrics, subverting usual conventions.

Question 3

What’s the intertextual references?

Answer 3

• The Wicker Man (against Christian values with witchcraft, shot of torches, the missing girl and victimised naked blonde girl, there’s cult surrealism)
• Un Chien Andalou (surrealist, eye-cutting scene like the hand stabbing in Riptide and violence against women)
• Psycho (violence against women)
• ‘10’ (the blonde woman being hunted by a man, following her in the same way the girl from Riptide feels she’s being watched. The woman also has a slow mo shot of her running on the beach)
• Midnight Cowboy (expects the girls to want him for his cowboy persona)

Question 4

What could bell hooks say?

Answer 4

• contradictory messages about gender in the video is the video objecting women and ironic way of feeding into the oppression of women.
• The video doesn’t seem to contribute to the need to end patriarchal oppression but it can be argued that they highlight female oppression and could therefore trigger audiences to.

Question 5

What does Roland Barthes say?

Answer 5

• there are polysomy meanings which could be interpreted in different ways e.g. is it implying that friends have “sold out” by giving into money or instead of his friends turning green with envy at the success of Vance Joy.

Question 6

What could David Gauntlett say?

Answer 6

His concept of pick and mix seems relevant to the style of music as the audiences are invited to interpret as a video of rejects straightforward messages.