'Riptide' Music Video

Analyse the   music video for Riptide by Vance Joy  focusing on the following elements. Refer to contextual information and technical codes to support your points.

GENRE AND AUDIENCE

Research and summarise the indie genre : conventions, influences, audience  and key artists.
What is the definition of " indie " and does the artist, video fit into this category ?


NARRATIVE AND ICONOGRAPHY

Linear , clear and resolved narrative , or fragmented montage based on the lyrics of the song ?
Analyse scenes for symbolic objects and the meaning they contain .

REPRESENTATION

How is gender represented in the video ? Look at stereotypes, repetitive motifs and how women and men are  framed narratively and through iconography.


POSTMODERNISM

The video explicitly refers to  film genres such as horror , and references specific film directors such as Wes Anderson and David Lynch , as well as including deliberately artificial sequences such as showing the making of the video itself.

Which of the following postmodernist techniques are used in the video ?
How does this change how  the audience responds to the messages, representations and other elements of the video ? Does it change the meaning ?

The key artists of the Indie genre are Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay and Radiohead. Indie music or indie is an abbreviation for 'Independent music' which is produced from major commercial record labels or their subsidiaries. They include an autonomous approach or "DIY" for recording and publishing. 

Indie pop groups generally have small fan groups as they have probably released their music to small, independent record labels. This genre of music generally doesn't suit mainstream audiences due to the themes in the lyrics. 

The music video uses strange lighting which appears to look quite vintage and unsettling to give the representation of Wes Anderson as he uses these quite a lot. It also tends to show a suitcase being opened unveiling the contents which are normally set out quite appealingly, which is a famous clip which is seen in many films and videos of Wes Anderson. The dark and uncanny lighting, on the other hand, symbolises David Lynch's work which is easy to recognise in many movies or videos as it is very disturbing and has a big impact on the audience. 

Sections of the music video give a strong feeling of discomfort when we see the woman in each clip appears to look more rougher than the previous, as blood adds to her face or she looks as if she has been crying. Towards the end we see the same woman holding her neck just after we see it bleeding so it confuses the audience as they do not understand whether she caused it to herself or if someone did it to her. This concludes that we do not get an actual message or moral to the music video to allow us to understand what the artist is trying to portray. 

There is a sense of the women being victims in the music video, as when we see them they have blood or bruises on them, or in one short clip the woman's hand is being stabbed. This could symbolise only the women are victims as we do not see any males in this position. 

In the music video it is quite rare to see the women's faces, for example when the woman is getting undressed whilst she faces the sea in a very objectified way. This could symbolise that the woman doesn't really care if people are watching her, or that she doesn't even notice. This is quite a cliche image that the media has on many women as they are quite often seen as getting undressed, this would give the idea that they are for men's pleasure, objectifying them.