This week was extended over 2 weeks because of Easter break. What we focused on was the presentation of our research reports on examples of narrative which we think plays with structure, convention or traditional ideas of what a ‘story’ could/should be.

I focused my research on Sin City (2005) which is basically several comic books compounded into one movie with fascinating American neo-noir that stays true to the comics. I think my research was received quite well in class as most people had seen Sin City and could relate to the topics I discussed.

One of the most interesting examples, I think, came from Matt on his discussion of Niki Minaj’s video clip Anaconda (which you can read here). In recent years there has definitely been a shift in the potential of music videos and their capability to tell a story. I remember when I was younger and majority of music videos would be all about the crazy costumes and disco lighting where the artist(s) would perform the song. Now, it seems as if there is a more cinematic approach to attaching video to a song. In the case of Anaconda, Matt writes about how Minaj has taken the original inspiration from Sir Mix-a-lot’s song “Baby Got Back” and changed the message. Using a lot of the baseline, drumbeat and lyrics from the song, Minaj is able to turn Anaconda into a song about women owning their own bodies and holding power over men (as opposed to the original meaning conveyed in ‘Baby Got Back’, where women were the subject of the male gaze). I thought this was an interesting narrative to look at because it isn’t one that is necessarily obvious, and the message is more powerful (in its own way..) through the use of video with the audio.

At this point in the course, I want to reflect on my idea of story telling and make a comment about any new understandings or ideas I may have of what story is. Last week Dan brought in a book called S which is basically a J.J Abrams novel but taken to the next level. There is extra writing in it as well as a lot of physical artefacts which can be removed from the book and looked at (e.g. notes of paper, drawings etc.) What I loved about this example is that you don’t really know where to start, and the book feels like many stories within a story – how does the creator decide or manipulate what is being looked at first? Are we supposed to read the book first or look at the annotations? It has a real feel of a discarded library book, and I find it so interesting that someone has deliberately chosen to deliberately vandalise a book, but still create the feeling that it is natural and candid. Basically, with story telling in the present time, I think audiences want more. I dthink they don’t want to simply be spoonfed with all the information. They want to be excited and eager to find out extra info ,and the story needs to be intriguing enough that they go the extra mile to find it.