Visual Essay:
Reflective Report:
Kacey Musgraves, a two time GRAMMY award winning country singer / songwriter, and Matt Healy, frontman of British pop-group The 1975 are two artists at the global peak of success, working in different genres. The visual essay which I created with Amelia Bamsey uses multiple media formats of both image and video, accompanied by audio, to explore a variety of ideas regarding these artists and their identity, including visual factors of their artist identity, hailing from a plethora of categories.
In his study of mod and rocker subcultures, Stanley Cohen described the idea of a (Cohen, 1972) “folk devil”, whereby an individual, outside of the mainstream society, is made to be seen as a corruptive force to mainstream society. The concept of ‘folk devil’ can be applied to both Matt Healy and Kacey Musgraves.
During his early years of success, Healy undertook behaviours which could have been detrimental to his own image, and, after being reported by the media, earned him the label of a ‘folk devil’. Firstly, his relationship with and recreational use of illegal drugs, including opiates, LSD and heroin, with the band’s breakthrough hit ‘Chocolate’ being a song written about smoking marijuana. Healy continues to allude to drug use heavily in all of the bands albums, something which the media, and mainstream society may not react to positively, and so push the label of ‘folk devil’ onto Healy, a successful musician with a platform, influencing his young, impressionable audience to consider drugs, by subtly selling the idea of them to his audience within his music. Furthering this, in his image and lyrical content, it can be argued that Healy mirrors the ideas of the 1970’s punk subculture. Worley wrote that punk subculture (Worley, 2013) “questioned social and political hierarchies and notions of personal identity”, topics which Healy focusses heavily on in his song writing, particularly in The 1975’s 2018 hit ‘Love It If We Made It’, where the music video for the song entwines images of the band, amongst other clips showing; gun violence, war, police brutality, riot, immigration issues, terrorism, environmental issues, global government failings and racism, to visually represent all of these issues, which Healy is addressing in the lyrics of this track. This entire song is asking the audience to question social and political hierarchies, including powerful global governments and modern social issues, as well as looking at oneself and understanding our own issues, just as Worley explained in his study of punk subculture, showing how Healy can fall into the lines of following, and promoting, the same basic ideas that the punk subculture founded itself on.
Similarly, Musgraves can be seen also as a ‘folk devil’, with her lyrical content sometimes falling on topics which are otherwise avoided in the country genre. For show, in her 2013 hit ‘Follow Your Arrow’, Musgraves shows solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community, criticises some beliefs of the Christian faith, and advocates the use of recreational marijuana. The release of this track was met with some reserve from mainstream country radio, with many stations showing resilience to airing it, with it’s message contrasting many of the beliefs of the conservative country genre. However, once the track won the Country Music Association Award (Taste of Country, 2014) ‘Song of The Year’ Award, reception of the track changed, and radio became more willing to air the single. Following this was a subtle shift in country music, with more artists branching out in their lyrical content, and more acceptance of difference and individual choice within the community. It could be argued that, prior to the award win, Musgraves was painted as a ‘folk devil’, seen to be attempting to corrupt the conservative values of country music, and influence the genre and its listeners to deviate from the expected norms of the genre.
When creating the visual essay, I knew that I had struggled to grasp a few topics covered in the module, as so knew that I would need to spend extra time re-visiting these topics, in my notes, and the lecture slideshow, in order to be able to incorporate more ideas, and understand them all fully, so that I could analyse and discuss their relation to the two selected artists as clearly, concisely and as detailed as possible. I then, once understanding the concepts better, decided to begin looking at which concepts could be applied to Kacey Musgraves, an artist I have followed the career of for years, whilst Amelia started to apply the concepts she could to Matt Healy, as she is better acquainted with the work of The 1975 than I am. We both looked at these artists and their live performance, how this was a key aspect to both of their careers, and how each has a different visual appearance when performing live, in order to represent their own identity, and appeal to their individual audience. Next we looked at Goodwin’s 1992 work on the ‘type of music video’, and added some context to Musgraves and Healy’s work. Once we had collected a variety of information, and found academic support, we came together to write a script. We felt that the best way to structure the script was to compare each artist in each category, before moving onto the next comparison, rather than addressing one artist entirely and discussing everything to do with them, before moving onto discuss the other artist. We felt that this was the most natural way to make our script flow, and made our explanations all sound much clearer and more concise. Having written, reviewed and improved our script, adding as much academic support as possible, we then recorded our script, and set to adding visuals to create our visual essay. We chose to use images that were simple and best visualised what we were trying to say in out script, as well as using a couple of video clips which I took at a Kacey Musgraves concert, to provide real examples of the unique visuals she uses on stage during her concerts.
My main struggle in undertaking this project was my lack of understanding of some concepts discussed in this module. Due to my previous study of sociology, I have been exposed before to subcultural studies and so felt confident in this subject, but was however far less confident in understanding most of the other topics. Therefore, I had to spend extra time revisiting these and attempting to understand these to better analyse them in my visual essay. A second struggle I had was my lack of technical experience with Final Cut Pro. Fortunately I was working with Amelia, who better understood how the programme worked, and could assist in creating the visual essay look as professional as possible.
Creating this visual essay was a harder process than I had anticipated. Following the research process, there were a great variety of topics which I felt could be included in the essay, and trying to limit them down to fit into the time limit left me worried that I may have failed to analyse topics in enough detail. Furthermore, I have gone through my entire educational career developing my ability to write a developed conventional essay, and have little experience with developing work to be written as a script and then converted into a visual essay. It was a beneficial experience to be able to, having spent the semester studying the visual aspects of music, consider how visuals can be used to assist audio learning and teaching, in explaining concepts in a visual essay.
Furthermore, I found myself integrating the ideas studied this semester, such as Machin’s idea of (Machin, 2010) ‘metaphorical association’ and the (Machin, 2010) “connotators”, which are; gaze, pose, distance, objects and settings”, to analyse the images and videos I was considering using in the visual essay, in order to ensure the selected images were the most appropriate, and most effective in expressing the ideas I was illustrating with them.
A final advantage that I take from this process, is the idea that in future projects, in presentations and other visual assignments, I can use visual aids to stimulate the ideas that I am presenting. A visual aid, such as the images and videos previously mentioned in this report, can help to illustrate ideas that the author wants the audience / listener to imagine, and so helps them to see what the author had originally pictured. Therefore, it is easier to explain settings and examples of instances, and have the audience better understand what the author had intended to say / explain.
Bibliography
Cohen. S, (1972), ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers’ London: MacGibbon and Key
Machin. D, (2010), ‘Analysing Popular Music’, Chapter 2: Album Iconography: Postures, Objects, Settings. SAGE Publications Ltd. Page 36,
Taste of Country Staff, (2014), ‘2014 CMA AWARDS WINNERS – FULL LIST’ http://tasteofcountry.com/2014-cma-awards-winners/ (Accessed 6th January 2019)
Worley. M, (2013), ‘Punk, Politics and Youth Culture, 1976-84’ https://unireadinghistory.com/2013/09/04/punk-politics-and-youth-culture-1976-84/ (Accessed 5th January 2019)
Rachael Janes 