Riptide music video

Notes😁✍

the narrative gets it meaning almost word for word from the lyrics - structure is fragmented - the lyrics directly address the narrative. 

repetition 

"running down to the riptide" - literally matches the visual, literal.

sometimes not as straight forward - the money isn't literal; symbolic/metaphorical

subtle - green with envy

money is green

"living on the highest shelf" nobody interested in her - unwanted

"I just want know" - predict the future using the prediction cards

the makeup on the woman changes and every time it comes to "you're gonna sing the words" - makeup smudged - in the second to last frame, you can gather that she's been crying and she's bruised - domestic abuse; scared. everything about her gets worse including the way she's singing the lyrics. in the final frame, she's bleeding and holding her neck- it's violence against woman as the character progressively worsens.  0

Recurring theme - violence against the women. 

first image the woman looks scared and restrained even though it's only a dentist

the 3rd shot of the woman at the beach is quite sexualising and you can't see her face which is depersonalising. she doesn't know she's being looked at/filmed 

the shot of the book and the hand - the title is "techniques of photographing girls" - the filmmakers know and are aware of what they're doing. - understand their own messages 

the shot of the woman in the sun shows its women looking dominate, unthreatened, happy and confident - a low angle shot

the shot after tends to be dark. 

intertextuality - references to horror genre - women get murdered/kidnapped a lot in horror films particularly pretty blonde one. - she manages to escape. 

another shot similar to the beach shot - being filmed from behind 

constant motif of the woman escaping

the genre is indie - two layers of meaning - indie means independent - in music its generally guitar/ukulele based. - Quirky/alternative 

- authenticity is significant 

- iconography of the VSH tape is immediately an indication of the indie genre

- old tv program is also an indication of the indie - quirky

post modernism is a wave of modernism as films and movies and music changed into parodies. - 1990's

direct reference to director Wes Anderson - blatantly being used in the music video - mockery 

material synecdoche - set colour schemes

riptide is inspired by Anderson's work, linking earnings with objects

blue velvet reference - 1980's David Lynch film - direct reference 

the film is the woman being used as a slave - often beaten 

reflexivity- when text becomes aware itself - the characters bring its awareness for example Rick and Morty

Analysis of Riptide

In the music video for Riptide performed by Vance Joy released in 2013, although the beat sounds very upbeat, we can gather that it's actually like a distraction from the whole story behind it. The narrative for this kind of gets its meaning word for word from the lyrics, for example "I was scared of dentists and the dark" literally showed a woman being scared of the dentists and the dark. It's very clever of how they made the lyrics directly address the narrative. I think the narrative was fragmented as it kept jumping back to the same scene but ahead in time - they used a linearity and nonlinearity style where the story had a beginning, middle and end but it was told in a nonlinear fashion. Where it said "Lady running down to the riptide" in the chorus, it was visual and literal as you could literally see a woman running to the riptides, again the narrative was in harmony to the lyrics. 

i also picked up that not everything was straightforward in the music video. In the scene where the money is falling, it could mean the money is symbolic or metaphorical. Furthermore, when we think about the colour of the money - green, we automatically link green with the emotion of envy as it's often portrayed in films or games. 

The recurring theme for the Riptide music video is violence against women. This is because in numerous shots, we see the women looking afraid or restrained. In the first shot, although she's in a dentist, you can see the fear on her face and she looks like she's being controlled. Then there is a woman that we see appear a few times and gradually, her emotions deepen. The first time we see her, her makeup is on point, she's cheerful and she's singing the lyrics correctly. in the next shot that we see her in, her lipstick has been smudged and her facial expression seems to have dulled a little bit. It shifts on to seeing bruises on her face along with tears. we can interpret this could be domestic abuse because it doesn't look self inflicted. In the final shot, the woman is bleeding on her neck and she's singing the words wrong just like the lyric says. it's explicitly showing us that this is the theme - violence against woman as you can just see her character progression worsen. 

In addition to this, we see a woman's hand being stabbed and a gun pointing off screen. It kind of questions whether the deeper message could be trying to normalise or question violence as it's seen explicitly. 

I think the Riptide video has an element of sexualisation as you can see a woman in one of the shots at the beach looking quite seductive and it's as though she's being filmed without consent because you cant see her face - depersonalising her -and it just appears that she's unaware of it. Her legs are being revealed quite a bit too which is kind of insinuating that the person recording was trying to show off the legs of the woman.

There's a shot in the music video where there's a book titled "Techniques of photographing girls". this is like a message from the filmmakers to the audience to let us know that they are aware of what they're doing and what their primary message is. It's more or less saying that the entire thing was already made known to them because it was deliberate, otherwise that book and its title wouldn't have been there.

The genre of the video is indie and that's shown simply by the shot of the VSH tape which is an iconography - it's normally associated with the indie genre and also, the video was inspired by Wes Anderson who's branded "The Master of Escapist Indie films". This is because they both link earnings to objects as seen variously.