How Important is the internet to your selected industry? Refer to your chosen texts in your answer. (30)

The first text I have chosen to discuss is Nirvana's 'Nevermind', released in 1991. Nirvana's album 'Nevermind' is promoted via the internet in modern day as the internet was not widely available in 1991 and so the internet has become of more importance in recent years.
- CHANGE POINT! - The internet uses fansites to promote the album 'Nevermind'. Fansites allow fans of the band Nevermind to discuss with other fans what they like about the bands music and videos for the singles and so creates a sense of social interaction virally with other fans, promoting Nirvana's music. This promotes the improtance of the internet as Nirvana's fans can feel socially accepted with other fans, and therefore find models of behaviour.- CHANGE POINT! - 
The use of Itunes is of importance to Nirvana's Nevermind as it influences Nirvana's audience to have an impulsive decision and download the album on the spot. This is of importance as it is a quick download and cuts the time it would take to go to a music shop and buy the album, it's instantly in your music as soon as you download it, making it more accessible to it's audience and influences quick sales.The internet is also of importance to Nirvana's Nevermind as it allows new generations access to older music through longevity. The promotion of Nevermind via the internet allows new generations of fans to access Nirvana's music and carry on discussions and influence the promotion of the band via fansites.

Genre Theory

"Genre is created through a process of repetition and recognition leading to anticipation and expectation." Graham Burton.

-key signifies and iconography

-characters and their functions

-storylines and plots

-star/celebrities

-use of camera/sound/editing

-use of dialogue/language/music

Every genre contains genre conventions.

As genres become established audiences begin to have certain expectations.

All genre texts combine:

"the familiar and the unexpected" - G.Burton 2009

"the same but different" - Nick Lacey 1999

To keep us interested producers offer us what we know with a twist

-Hybridity

-New Techniques

-Modern Social Issues

-Different Characters

FILM NOIR

-1941 - Maltese Falcon

- Big Combo

-2008 - The Spirit

SCIENCE FICTION

-1956 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers

- Avatar

-1986 - The Fly

SOCIAL REALISM

-The Taste Of Honey

-Saturday Night, Sunday Morning

The Use of Twitter and it's Benefits.

Lady Gaga is also well known for using the social medium of twitter to communicate with her social networking teenage fans on a regular basis. Via adopting this strategy of digital technology in her marketing Lady GaGa increases her sales by using Parasocial Interaction, this is where GaGa informs all her fans about what she is doing where as she knows nothing about what her fans are doing, it is a one sided relationship. An example of Lady GaGa building this relationship is seen when GaGa posts on twitter about visiting certain places, this informs her fans about where she is and what she is doing, she portrays that she will be visiting certain people but she does not know which of her fans will be attending, so her fans believe her tweets are specifically aimed at them. This satisfies her fans in having a substitute for real life companionship when actually, GaGa only knows about a small percentage of her fans. GaGa targets such a large audience via twitter as she is the second most followed person with 33.5 million followers, this embraces digital technology and helps build a relationship with fans, causing her to gain satisfaction by encouraging her fans to legally download her music, because they believe they are identified personally with Lady GaGa. This then boosts GaGa's profit as she can earn money through advertising specific products in her tweets, encouraging her fans to buy them and benefiting GaGa for promoting these products, helping her earn a third of her wage.

Promotion via the Music Video

Lady Gaga used marketing via digital technology when producing music videos in order to promote each of the 5 singles that she released from the album 'The Fame'. These music videos were cleverly designed in order to gratify her target audience with a specific mode of address. An example of this is visible in the music video of 'Just Dance' is when she personally identifies with them. Gaga uses models of behaviour similar to those of her target audience as she gets ready to go out, goes to a party and dances, this targets an audience of 15- 25 year olds as they also go to and desire to go to parties and dance. Gaga also uses social interaction to get her audience to express their feelings about the video 'Paparazzi' using word of mouth. GaGa engages her audience to talk about the video by wearing a metal costume, this would gratify her audience to talk about the video because they will talk about the metal costume. This could also engage her audience in The Watercooler Theory.

District 9

Discuss issues of representation of Gender and Race?


Discuss how typical the text is of it's Genre?
The text is typical of it's genre as it contains typical science fiction conventions used within classic science fiction films. These conventions are the narrative themes of aliens and humans co-existing, new techinologies and consequences, trasformation/ body horror; the use of advanced scientific events within a fictional narrative to propose and discuss a real life moral debate and traditional iconography. The scene justifications of each of these conventions are:

• Narrative themes of aliens and humans co-existing - district 9, new technologies and consequences - weapons, transformation/ body horror - Wickus turning into alien. 

How is this film Post Modern?
The film District 9 is a Post-Modern film as it is a hybrid and pays homage to other Sci-Fi texts. District 9 is a hybrid genre as it mixes the two genres of Science Fiction and Documentary Style together. Justifying this, the science fiction is portrayed through aliens, a key part in a science fiction text and documentary style is portrayed through stock footage such as news reports and found footage waiting to be used. District 9 pays homage to other Science Fiction texts such as 'The Fly', in particular the scenes where Wickus bites off his finger nails and where Wickus looks up at the Koobus Venter before he attempts to shoot Wickus, this happens in 'The Fly' when the man is frothing at the mouth.

What is the contextual cultural content in the text?

Made In Chelsea - 'Rah' and 'Sloane Ranger'

Sloane Ranger

The term Sloane Ranger (often shortened to Sloane or less frequently Sloanie) refers to a stereotype in the UK of young, upper class or upper-middle-class women, or men who share distinctive and common lifestyle traits. The term is a punning portmanteau of "Sloane Square", a location in Chelsea, London famed for the wealth of residents and frequenters, and the television Westerns character The Lone Ranger.

Initially the term "Sloane Ranger" was used mostly in reference to women, a particular archetype being Diana, Princess of Wales. However, the term now usually includes men. Male Sloanes have also been referred to as "Rahs" and "Hooray Henrys". The term Sloane Ranger has similar related terms in other countries: in France they are called 'BCBG' (bon chic, bon genre).

Rah

Rah is a pejorative term referring to a stereotypical affluent young upper class or upper-middle class person (male or female) in the United Kingdom. The characteristics of a rah are similar to those of the Sloane Ranger stereotype also recognised in the UK. Although a rah is generally younger, typically around university age (18–25). An important feature of the rah stereotype is the enjoyment of an affluent/party lifestyle with excessive financial assistance from their parents.

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloane_Ranger and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rah_(slang)

To what extent are your chosen texts typical of their genre?

Sin City - Clip 4

Sin City is a postmodern text which is a typical hybrid consisting of the two genres, the Film Noir and Comic Book genres. Sin City has typical Film Noir genre and contain conventions that define it as a Film Noir text. The first convention of this text is that the character Dwight is a cynical protaganist. In the text, we see Dwight driving from Old Town getting ready to dump the car in the Tar Pits as it has dead bodies in that the girls from Old Town have just killed. Dwight is a cynical protaganist as he is paranoid about death, this occurs when dwight is driving the car and one of the dead characters in particular 'Jackie Boy' speaks to him and tells him he is not going to get away with it. This relates to the Cold War as men didn't know if the war was going to start again and they didn't know if they were going to die. The second convention is femme-fatale, this occurs in Sin City when the women from old town complain that they don't want to be controlled by men again as they like their own power, this relates to females at the time of WW2 as they had power when the men went to war and when the men came back they did not want to lose this power. The typical film noir convention of a voice over narration also occurs in the text.  The use of voice over narration gives the viewer first person perspective, the voice over describes the scene and the characters emotions and opinions. This convention is used in the text when Dwight is driving the car from Old Town to the Tar Pits and he is narrating in his head what he is going to do about the bodies. This gives us insight into what he is thinking and how he feels about the situation he is in.