Riptide

Riptide by Vance Joy

• Is Vance Joy's first single to be released in the USA
• Nearly has 300 million views on youtube
• Directed by Dmitri Basil and Laura Gorum
• Vance Joy is Australian
• His music is indie-folk pop

• Very atypical for a music video
• It is deliberately difficult to analyse
• It has a lot of hard-cuts (no smooth transitions)
• A lot of binary opposition
• Master shot of the 'singer' singing into the camera
• The chorus and the verses is very structured
• The video is Atemporal
• Objectification of women, being vulnerable, we are positioned uncomfortably in the video
• Made for heterosexual men: Lisbet Van Zoonen, Male Gaze
• low-key hinting towards being feminist
• Sexualisation is used
• Voyeurism
• Scopophilia: Scopophilic pleasure, taking pleasure at watching someone
• The video is very polysemic
• Bizarre, creepy and can promote word of mouth advertising
• Its very contrapuntal : When the song doesn't match up with the video
• One ideology perspective of the video is that women are weak and vulnerable
• video is very sadistic 
• Video may be a criticism to a patriarchal society

Structuralism: Claude Levi-Strauss

• Is about and underlying meanings in signs and symbols
• Strauss argued that we make sense of the world through Binary oppositions. This is to say we can only understand something through what is not
• You can also call binary oppositions, Diametric opposition
• Producers uses Binary opposition because of:
• Entertainment
• Comedy
• Horror
• Grabs the audience's attention quickly and easily
• Emphasises one side of the binary opposition
• Makes it easier for the producer to construct ideologies

The muted colours creates sadness and misery, the first person male gaze as well             >

<Her gesture makes her seem like a statue, this objectification suggests that she is more of an object than a person

< Pastel pink blouse connotes to the stereotypical girl colour

< Low angle shot makes her seem powerful

<The dark side shot, the female hands in this posture suggest that females are weak, the lighting is low-key and there is proairetic code

Mise-en-scene of her eyes signs that she is afraid, suggests manipulation, and the purple suggests its creepy                       >

How the video could be seen as feminist:

1. The use of women's bodies being used to sell media products
2. Low angle of woman on balcony connotates power
3. Woman injured but carries on singing
4. mid-shot of woman in graveyard and low-key lighting connotes death, misery and darkness
5. Mid-shot of women removing swimming costume is critical of the sexualisation that is common in music videos
6. Preferred reading is that people are supposed to enjoy the video
7. An uncomfortable moment is the master-shot of woman singing and losing her makeup between shots. The fact she is bleeding is important it is symbolic of how women are treated in the entertainment industry. According to Van Zoonen, women are used to sell the product.
8. Intertextuality
1. Close-up shot of screaming woman face, shrouded by darkness
2. Colourful dream-like quality that echoes through out
3. Woman who is terrorise by men's pleasure
4. highly emotive use of colour
5. Use of cowboy iconography links to "A fist full of dollars"
6.