Throughout many years, identity has changed overtime for various age groups, in particular the youth. To form a familiar understanding with another person creates a collective identity whereby similar thoughts and interests are shared between each other.
Jacques Lacans theory is “we try to gain an understanding of ourselves by looking through a mirror” by this she means as a young child, an identity is developed by 'mirroring' what we see around us, such as the media.
As we grow older, the media continue to dominate our thoughts and actions acting as the 'Hypodermic Needle Model'. Media is like a drug, and we inject it without even wanting to, whereby it becomes almost inescapable.
If we take a look at a successful R&B artist within the music industry such as Rihanna, we can see how her personal changes throughout her music career has had an effect on youth, causing their identities to mediate.
Richard Dyer's Star theory is “A star is an image constructed from a range of materials". This can be supported clearly by an artist such as Rihanna. Rihanna has been a role model for many young kids, in particular to girls who may follow certain trends, styles and latest fashion that are set by her. She is moulded to the specific needs and wants of the target audience as identified by the management. For example if we concentrate on her hair, from previous videos such as "Pon De Replay" and "If Its Lovin' That You Want" we can see that her hair is long and styled particularly to suit the current trend at that time. Her hair changed dramatically to a short bob in her video "Umbrella" which caused a lot of young girls to start having their hair cut short into a bob. Furthermore, in her recent videos such as "S&M" and "What's My Name" she dyed her hair red which ceased the 'natural brown' look, creating even more girls to follow this look thus causing youths appearances and identities to mediate. Richard Jenkins says we need to interact in order to form our identity, and this can be done by literally replicating a person who help us to do so within the media, in this case, Rihanna.
Print Media, such as magazines can pick up on Richard Dyer's stay theory and use it to their advantage to increase sales. For instance, by having Rihanna as their front cover will attract youth into purchasing it, which causes both the Magazine Company and Rihanna's management to mutually benefit from this.
The levels of sexual references has also increased over time such as the lyrics to a song and the clothes worn. Sticking to Rihanna, if we take a look into her lyrics of "What's My Name" we can analyse and see that sexual innuendos and promiscuity is heightened within the content of the video. She shows more of her body, and her album covers can be considered to be 'soft porn' in comparison to her older ones. In reference to previous music videos by her such as "If Its Loving That You Want", we can see how innocent both the video and lyrics are in comparison to how explicit this has become and shockingly acceptable in our generation. We can say the youth of today have become 'desensitised' whereby the high levels of exposure is the norm within society and morally acceptable.
Identity is not necessarily mediated simply through time, but through different artists too. For example, two current artists who are successful in the music industry are Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne. The two artists juxtapose each other in their lyrics and what their music videos consist of. Lil Waynes' videos feature money, cars and women as he raps about them in almost every song, creating women to be inferior to men as he raps excessively about them. From his song 'Lollipop' the lyrics are "shawty wanna lick me like a lollipop" which has strong sexual connotations with the video is filled with scantily clad women.
In Nicki Minaj's video 'Super Bass' she calls herself a 'Barbie' referring to being 'played with' and exaggerates the image of sex appeal. However she shows that she is the dominant figure and the male figures are her sexual desires/objects. This can cause a great confusion to the audience and youth as to what image she is trying to portray. Her image may be perceived differently causing distorted implications of her as an artist and an individual thus creating youth identity to mediate. Winships notion can relate to this as his notion of complexity is about being prepared, in terms of audience gratification to finally recognise the ideal version of ourselves. So if we decide to follow Rihanna, Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj we are finding and accepting our identity, therefore mediating.
In conclusion, youth and their identity has been mediated through the use of music videos whereby many give off different connotations to pick up on. The ones we choose to follow (ie Rihanna over Nicki Minaj or vise versa) will be the identity that we create, and mediate it from the identity we had before. Technology has allowed representations to develop (the use of auto-tune) which i think will help create a collective identity in the future as more and more artists are beginning to use it now over their natural voice which will have an effect on the youth and the way they choose to express themselves.
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