Before the days of music video, performers did not have much of a visual presence - it was their music which represented them - primarily on the radio. But in the words of The Buggles: "Video killed the radio star".
Now, the image of a band or artist is a very carefully constructed media representation designed to appeal to a specific target audience.
For this task you must analyse how a band or musician has constructed their image. You need to answer the questions: How have they constructed their image? and Who does the representation appeal to?
Their fashion style - how can you describe it? (show examples)
Their music genre - how do they conform to it (or not)?
Their media representation - magazine covers, album artwork etc
Motifs - are their any recurring themes? (eg Michael Jackson's white glove)
Symbolism - do they make use of cultural symbols? (crucifixes, flags, dollar signs etc)
Body Language/Performance - what do they usually do in their videos?
Audience - who is their target audience? How does the image of the star appeal to them?
Take... Lady Gaga!
Lady Gaga first came to prominence in 2008 with her debut album, The Fame. Since then she has become a global phenomenon and has always maintained a very carefully constructed public image and performance persona.
Lady Gaga's stage costumes are consistently theatrical and flamboyant.
Fashion/Visual Look
Drawing from historical and retro fashion styles her 'look' is eclectic and derivative. Her costumes often emphasise a fetishistic sexuality, which is very much an aspect of her performance and on-stage persona. But this is not new, her influences in the music industry are self-evident:
Genre
Lady Gaga's music is firmly placed in the pop genre, she appeals to a mainstream audience, but she breaks from the usual mainstream representations and instead presents herself using the iconography of counter-culture. Lady Gaga's image constantly shifts. Madonna also had a gift for reinventing herself, but while her representation, no matter what shape it took, was always cool, glamourous and sophisticated, Lady Gaga's representation is consistently constructed as grotesque, surreal and unsettling... take for example the final shot from the Bad Romance video of her lying in bed with a corpse while sparks fly out of a wierd mechanical device attached to her bra:
Media Representation
Lady Gaga's appearances in the media are as varied as her stage costumes. While an overall identity can be traced through each of her magazine appearances, each image is constructed to appeal to the target audience of the magazine. Take these for example:
On the cover of Vogue, she wears a classic dress. Her catwalk-model-thinness is emphasised by the dress and her body language. The image is a medium long shot to display the dress at its best. The image is not a representation of sexuality, if anything Lady Gaga looks androgynous. This all appeals to the style and fashion-concious ABC1 female audience of this magazine... Pink hair ensures her image is not entirely 'sanitised' for this audience.
A highly sexualised image of Lady Gaga is little surprise for the fron cover of a 'lad's mag'.
The Guardian Weekend Magazine readers are generally an audience of 28-55 year old professionals, who are high culture oriented and socially aware. The artistry of Lady Gaga is emphasised here. Her pose has connotations of ballet, the costume is reminiscent of renaissance painting. But of course, her make-up and facial implants are undeniable signifiers of fetishised beauty.
A big close up of Lady Gaga is typical for a hair and beauty magazine. It is the details of the make-up which are of interest to this audience.
Through all these images a theme of borrowing and mixing persists. Lady Gaga could be described as the archetypal postmodern artist because of her intertextuality, fragmented identity and eclecticism.
Motifs
Lady Gaga's visual motifs tend to borrow from other genres and styles. One recurring theme seems to be the fetishised body. Blood, monsters, mutilation and prosthetics tend to feature in much of her work. It isn't new, Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne were doing it before she was born. But she did bring it into the mainstream. Take her performace at the 2009 MTV Music Video Awards which ended with Lady Gaga bleeding from the eyes:
At the 2010 MTV Music Awards Lady Gaga famously wore a dress made entirely from meat. It was controversial - animal rights activists voiced their objection to it. Lady Gaga claimed it was a statement about human rights:
Other recurring motifs include a certain futuristic look evident in a number of videos and photo shoots. Though even these are actually often references to retrospective - rather than futuristic - styles. The following shot, for example, is a direct reference to Friz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis
Symbolism
Lady Gaga also often uses religious imagery. Maddona did the same, as have numerous other musicians. It perhaps stems from a catholic upbringing, and certainly invites publicity. What it means is almost irrelevant - it represents the very opposite of sexual liberation, it stands for abstinance and traditional values, but also for the positive values of love, faith and sacrifice - perhaps the contradictions of the imagery are something which Lady Gaga embraces and promotes in the contruction of her identity and, ultimately, the product she is selling to her audience.
Performance
Lady Gaga's performance in her videos is always highly theatrical and features the pop convention of group synchronised dance. There has also been much discussion of the originality of the choreography...
An article in the Guardian identifies some of the best moves in the video for Telephone:
The "hand over the phone card or I'll shank you" air-punch (3m, 11s)
The boxing bikini bad girls' strut (3m, 24s)
The "cyanide in the fish paste" teeth-gnash (6m, 53s)
The demented post-poisoning Wonder Woman stomp (7m, 44s)
Target Audience:
Primary: 15-25 female and gay males
Secondary: broad mainstream audience 12-44 female and male.
Lady Gaga has a high profile for speaking out for the gay rights, and so has large gay following.
Her popularity may well be to do with her representations of 'otherness'. In other words, in a world where many people have feelings of inadequacy due to the 'perfection' represented by most mainstream pop icons... Lady Gaga celebrates imperfection. You might call it 'freak chic'.
The audience enjoy the theatre of her performance, they enjoy sexually provocative dance and body language, and they enjoy working out the meaning of symbolic and intertextual iconography.
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