Narrative
Iconic Signs
Rihanna has always been known for her many varying hairstyles and hair colours over the years she has been a female solo artist. In this video we see her more natural brown, wavy hair which acts as an iconic sign in all of her videos that establishes her uniqueness to want to be different. As well as this, we also see tattoos both on her ribs and behind her ear. Rihanna's most famous tattoo being the one behind her ear of three small stars, this also acts as a signifier in recognising her as an individual.
Social myths - reinforced or challenged?
The narrative behind this song tells the story of a relationship between a girl and boy which is quite dysfunctional, in the way that they get on well together at times but then argue and fall out at others. Throughout their relationship, Rihanna conforms to the stereotype of youths being perceived as rebellious, as she is seen smoking, getting a tattoo and partying. Therefore, she is reinforcing the dominant ideology society has of youths holding anti-authoritarian motifs.
Indexical Sign
The indexical sign constructed from social myths such as rebellion in the video are that not all youths are bad. Although Rihanna smokes and parties with many other youths, she doesn't commit any crimes such as vandalism which challenges stereotypical views of youths when they have been drinking to be aggressive.
I like your analysis of Rihanna's visual motif of her hair and tatoos which works as an iconic sign to construct originality which is one of the characteristics of a star identified by Dyer. This kind of Visual motif could be used for the actor playing our artist for example the heart on Marina and the Diamonds cheek or Madonna's mole.
ReplyDeleteSome good comments Charlie, more micro analysis of aspects of the video, identifying key signifiers would improve this. LL4
ReplyDeleteI like your point about the representation of youth being not all bad, the commit no crime that can harm others in the video and its narrative is based solely on the fun and fast lives of only being young once, this is something I would love to use in our video.
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