Ya Mama- Fatboy Slim

    

             


What representations of the artist are constructed in this music video? How does the use of camera, editing, mise-en-scene help to construct these? 


In Fatboy Slim's 'Ya Mama' music video, three white men, stereotypically described to be 'hillbilly's' are shown to live on an unnamed Caribbean island in a seemingly 'backwards' society. They are presented as being naïve for reasons such as the lack of modern technology present in the video, they watch Tom and Jerry on television- a 1940s cartoon and they think of no better way to make money then to let people listen to their new cassette which has the 'power' to make them dance uncontrollably. As the video progresses, the scene cuts to a market place which has sellers at their stalls with signs hung such as 'This could be your cake', hand painted. This use of simple language for advertisement and the fact that it was made by hand is mise-en-scene to emphasise the backwards nature of the society and their lack of academia or even factory technology. Even the Police Station has a sign spelt 'Polis Stazion' showing that even those who bring authority to the town can't be taken seriously due to their bad spelling.

The video presents a male world. The three 'hillbilly's', the stall owners and the police are all male and all lose control of their bodies due to the music. This could have been to show how immature males are as they are presented to act like children.

At the end of the video, the white 'hillbilly' who received the cassette at the beginning of the video is arrested by a black police officer, reversing stereotypical roles for perhaps irony. However, the chief is presented as a classic, laid back police officer, as shown in tv shows such as 'The Simpsons' for a comedy effect and so is also taken over by the music.  
                                  

Roland Barthes: Semiotics

Roland Barthes: Semiotics

Roland Barthes was born on 12th November 1915 and died on 26th March 1980. He was one of the earliest structuralist or poststructuralist theorists of culture. His work developed the ideas of signification which are used in cultural studies and critical theory today. He was one of the leading theorists of semiotics, the study of signs.

Automatically, we have actions and thoughts which are usually controlled by a complex set of cultural messages and conventions and are dependent upon our ability to interpret them instinctively and instantly. An example of this is traffic lights, when we see the different colours, we know how to react to them as it is a sign that has been established by cultural convention over a long period of time which we learn as children. If we see the red light on a set of traffic lights, we subconsciously know that it means stop. With Barthes' theory, everyone is a semiotician, because everyone is constantly unconsciously interpreting the meaning of signs around them.

Roland Barthes researched how audiences interpret what they see. He argued that: 'The audience look for signs to help them interpret narrative... these deeply rooted signs are based on expectations the audience has due to their prior knowledge of old tales or myths'.

In his narrative theory he suggested texts may be 'open' or 'closed'. Open texts are open to interpretation and can have many different subjective meanings that are individual to the audience. Closed texts however are those that are produced with a single, definitive meaning in mind, rendering any interpretation from the audience inaccurate.

Barthes theory says that every narrative is interwoven with several codes out of the 5 that exist and are marked by the multiple meanings suggested by these codes.
These 5 codes are:
-The Hermeneutic/ Enigma code
-The Proairetic/ action code
-The Semantic Code
-The Symbolic Code
-The Referential Code