Textual Analysis of 1950 by King Princess

Textual analysis of 1950 by King Princess for media coursework

1. Textual Analysis of 1950 by King Princess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxWTS25Tbk

2. Narrative Although the narrative isn’t as obvious as one might think, the main gist is a story of a couple breaking up. The video begins as a light-hearted set of videos about a couple in love before subtly leaving the second character (the lover) behind whilst King Princess smokes away the rest of the video, a metaphor for turning to other needs in order to fill the hole a break-up leaves. The whole idea of the song is being in love with an idea of a person, an imagined image that has been made better in their own imagination. If you put the person you love on a higher pedestal, your adoration for them becomes stronger than the actual love for the relationship.

3. Camera Shots The videos camera shots are split with two distinct differences: they are shot with different cameras. A professional one is used to film the clips with King Princess playing with her band on stage whereas a different camera, most likely hand-held, is used with the couple and the narrative shots to give the impression of being a phone or personal camera. The professional shots are mainly close-ups of the star persona, such as stated in Andrew Goodwin’s theory of music videos, and wide shot footage of the band behind her. Although King Princess is a artist on her own, the musicians who play at her concerts are also featured in the music video and they are known to be close friends with her.

4. Camera Shots The other close-up and mid shots used are there to create the idea of modern love being recorded as with the shaky camera, being held, emulating this idea of home videos of a relationship. The filter paired with them creates an overall sense of the footage being made at home and King Princess is watching them back after the relationship has broken down. The shot of King Princess with flowers in her hair and a hand stroking her face allows for the audience to feel involved at the close-up shot is taken from a slightly elevated angle to give the impression that it is from somebody’s point of view.

5. Mise-en-scene King Princess defies gender stereotypes a lot in her music, and her style of clothing is androgynous, suggesting that it doesn’t matter to her. As well as this, at the beginning of the music video she has a pencil drawn moustache. She spoke about it in an interview where she said that if a man sang a song about dating a woman he would be praised, so she drew on a moustache to satirize this idea about men dominating the music industry.

6. Mise-en-scene The cigarette that King Princess is seen smoking in the video has many connotations, the main one being the flirtatious way she blows the smoke at the camera. To blow cigarette smoke into someone's face is seen as an indirect kiss, as we touched on in Hayley Kiyoko’s video. So, by blowing the smoke at the camera gives the audience the impression that King Princess is giving them an indirect kiss through the video. 1950 is the only music I looked at the addresses the audience head on throughout the video and addresses them directly. This is because, being a fairly new popular artist, she has to appeal to her audience by mainly using herself as the model, as in Andrew Goodwin’s music video theory.

7. lyrics “I love it when we play 1950/So cold that your stare’s bouta kill me/I’m surprised when you kiss me” is an analogy of back when queer people had to hide their identity and their love in public and is compared to unrequited love. “So I’ll wait/For you/I’ll pray” She plays with religious imagery here as religion and homosexuality are polar opposites with people being shunned by religious communities for years due to their sexuality and this lyric reclaims this idea. The second verse of “I love it when we play 1950/So bold make ‘ em know that your with me” suggest that moving forward, they can accept themselves without fear of the opinions of other and what they may think.

8. Editing The entire video has a filter over it except the last clip which is normal, suggesting that being in love is like having a filter over everything which disguises the bad parts. There are a lot of stitching together of videos with two on top of one another and the different videos playing different footage giving an impression that many things are happening at once, which makes the audience feel overwhelmed. The footage of the band playing reminds the audience that there is a reality to this fantastical world of love and romance and the sad way in which King Princess sings reminds the audience of this..