Media Coursework

Music Video: Common - Letter to the Free Our first Music Video CSP is Common - Letter to the Free. This is a stunning music video and protest song that documents black American culture and the legacy of slavery. Notes from the lesson Common: a pioneering artist Common is a Black American cultural icon who has maintained a political and social concern in his music. At one of the most charged periods in American history, the video  Letter to the Free  is presented as his contribution to the divisive political and social issues of contemporary America, a sense that he is attempting to draw attention to initiating a new wave of ‘protest music’. Michael Eric Dyson on Common Dyson on black stereotypes and Common: “Many critics don’t account for the complex ways that some artists in hip hop play with stereotypes to either subvert or reverse them. Amid the pimp mythologies and metaphors that gut contemporary hip hop, rappers like Common… seize on pimpology’s prominence to poke ...

Music Video: Theory There are a range of important theories we need to learn as part of our Music Video unit. Both our Music Video Close-Study Products contain representations of black Americans. We therefore need to study a range of theories that address the representation of black or minority ethnic people in the media. Notes from the lesson Paul Gilroy: The Black Atlantic Paul Gilroy is a key theorist in A Level Media and has written about race in both the UK and USA. In The Black Atlantic (1993), Gilroy explores influences on black culture. One review states: “Gilroy’s ‘black Atlantic’ delineates a distinctively modern, cultural-political space that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but is, rather, a hybrid mix of all of these at once.” Gilroy is particularly interested in the idea of black diasporic identity – the feeling of never quite belonging or being accepted in western societies even to this day. For example, Gil...

This music video is done very well and has a dark and sad tone to it you can tell this from the weather as it is very cloudy and dark, Also you cans ee that the tone of the video is depressing as it looks like an old man is watching a bunch of people die.