It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a media student in possession of free will, must be in want of finding ways to incorporate intertextuality into all of their projects.
Jokes aside, I am an enthusiast of incorporating easter-eggs and homages to my favourite texts into everything I do, and this post is about just that. As I have discussed in my initial research posts, intertextuality is one of the ways we can enhance the layers of meaning a text possesses, and I thought it might be a good idea to apply that to our music promotion package as a whole—accordingly. this post discusses our use of intertextuality in retrospect (along with the planning that went into the process), not just in the music video, but also the minor tasks such as the digipak.
Photography: René Magritte
A globally recognized surrealist painter, René Magritte is known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature and boundaries of reality and representation. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.
Our music video, however, features an attempt at a reimagination one of his surrealist photographs, except with an empty frame.
from our music video:
the original:
This was added to the music video because of several reasons, one of them being wanting to add a touch of surrealism to the already abstract video—a feature of many alternative/indie music videos. I also thought it would be rather fascinating to interpret Magritte’s work in a feminist context.
One of Magritte’s favourite methods in generating intrigue was to obscure one object behind another, especially faces – think: his iconic painting, The Son of Man (1964), depicting a bowler-hatted figure, his features covered by a large apple. “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see,” he once explained of this preoccupation.
— What Magritte’s Secret Photos Teach Us About the Surrealist https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/10506/what-magrittes-secret-photos-teach-us-about-the-surrealist
Using his work as an inspiration, I wanted to represent Magritte’s surrealist ideas through a feminist lens and leave the interpretation up to the audience who can decide what the homage to the photo may mean—i.e. is it a reminder of the difficulty women face in asserting their identity under the patriarchy, an attempt by the protagonist/artist to hide from the prying gaze of harassers, or something else entirely?
The idea of referencing this photo was pitched by me in one of the Zoom meetings Esha and I organised to discuss more of our respective ideas.
Film: Wong Kar Wai
Considering the amount of Wong Kar Wai-related content on my media studies blogs, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I am physically incapable of not making every media project somehow be related to his work.
Naturally, I suggested that we should try to recreate Wong Kar Wai and Christopher Doyle’s use of the step-printing technique—or as close as we could get to visually recreating it. I left the decision to include/exclude this editing technique up to Esha and she was able to achieve an effect in post-production that looks pretty close to the original inspiration!
our video (1:44 onwards):
the inspiration:
I think the “slow-fast” effect that we achieved by mimicking this technique gives the impression that the protagonist is stuck in an oppressive setting and highlights their desperation to find a way out by imbuing the visual terrain of the video with a sense of urgency and disorientation.
In addition to this referential and technical code’s integration into the music video, I wanted to believe that those familiar with Wong Kar Wai’s work might also be reminded of how he often employs music in the form of leitmotifs to develop his characters—this might allow our music video’s amplification of Muddy Waters’ lyrics to leave a deeper emotional impact on audiences:
The director's employment of preexisting music offers a compelling view into the psyche of his female characters and privileges their subjectivies, even when male protagonists have narrative supremacy.
— East, west, and gendered subjectivity: the music of Wong Kar-Wai by Erik Kersting
Literature: Carol Ann Duffy & Adrienne Rich
Female perspectives in the mythic and folkloric world are rare because of the universal importance placed on male perspectives. A male-dominated society puts the right to tell stories into the hands of men thereby appropriating women’s realities and downplaying them. Consequently, an idea has formed over the centuries that male experiences, then, are the norm to define oneself as humans—Carol Ann Duffy’s collection of poetry titled The World’s Wife challenges this notion by giving a voice to unheard women of history, literature, mythology and beyond.
Our artist’s stage name is based on one such poem by Duffy and helps exemplify the theme of “asserting identity as a woman in a patriarchal society,” enhancing the artist’s brand image by underlining the way it ties in with the content of the music video.
Another literary allusion is hidden in one of the album's tracks: “book of myths,” a term used in the last lines of a famous feminist poem—Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich—that aims to underline the same themes mentioned above.
I hope Andrew Goodwin and John Stewart are proud of us for making our project a mosaic of various intertextual references to literature, film, and photography.
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