Textual Analysis – Taylor Swift – Wildest Dreams

Textual Analysis – Taylor Swift – Wildest Dreams

 

Narrative

The storyline of the video is she’s in love with a man but they are always falling out and arguing. It’s a very basic storyline where they argue and make up multiple times. The theme within this video is love and all to do with being hurt and how at the end Taylor is hurt as the man she loves is walking down the aisle with another woman. I believe this relates to the Todorov theory as it has a recognisable structure I the sense that they love each other, then they hate each other and then they love each other again. It’s the classic storyline where the couple have love and hate at the same time however normally it’s happily ever after but with this video it’s not as Taylor is upset as he’s got another woman.

 

Representation

Within this music video, throughout the piece there is an issue when it comes to representation in terms of ethnicity as the only ethnicity you see is people of the white race and other ethnic groups are not see what so ever. In addition to this, they were filming in what looked like Africa which is where the black race originate from therefore to not include someone of that race seemed somewhat strange. The person playing the main character is in fact Taylor swift herself so she’s acting as well as performing.

 

Audience

The target audience for this piece is teenage girls/women between 14 – 20 and I believe the audience has been targeted correctly, this is because of the love/romance sort of teenage first love. Accessing the video for the target audience will be easy as they will most likely use YouTube. ITunes or Spotify. This are the most common methods within the age group and due to the fact YouTube is easy to access and most importantly it’s free of charge to all users. Moreover, the key signifiers that indicate that this video is for this particular target audience is that throughout there is a love/romance theme and Taylor is the girl that loves this man so much that she can’t help but keep going back to him and this is the same with teenage girls who have their first boyfriend.

 

Organisation

The record company plays a big part in the music video as they have their say in what they want in the music video, how they want it set out etc. they will do wat they can in their power to own the company as much money as possible. Moreover, the star (Taylor swift) is promoted using different social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. For this music video Taylor used her big fan base and promoted through twitter and by tweeting when her song will be out and music video etc. this excited her fan base as they were waiting for ages to know when it was going to be released and Taylor updated them every step of the way. 

 

Technical codes

The first camera shot we see is an establishing shot; this shows the surroundings of where they are filming and believe this shot starts the music video off nicely. Towards the middle of the music video you can start to see that there are shots that are repeated a lot and in this case it is close ups. These are used to show the emotion on her face and this helps to tell the story as one minute she’s happy and all loved up but then other times she’s upset and angry and the camera helps to add to the effect.  Furthermore, the editing within this video is very fast, there are frequent cuts and transitions throughout, and this creates an excited very fast atmosphere. It’s the sort of song that you would listen to if you are in a good/excited mood.

 

Visual codes

The video is set within Tanzania, although I knew this already due to Taylor swift updating her twitter page most days but there are connotations that it is set in Tanzania as there are animals such as lions, giraffe’s and elephants etc. also, there are jeep like cars that you tend to see within Africa in the desert which are generally associated with Africa and obviously Tanzania is in Africa. Furthermore, at the start there are three written graphics which are after one another. The first one says “Taylor Swift”, the next one says “A film by Joseph Kahn” and the one after that says “wildest dreams”. This typography is good as it clearly states the artists name, who produced it and the title of the song.

 

Genre

The genre of the music video is pop and the artist is also pop, this makes it suitable as the artist and the song fit into the same genre which generally makes it more enjoyable for the viewer. At the beginning of the music video I could clearly establish that the theme was love/romance and therefore you could tell what the storyline was going to be about however there was a point in the video that I thought was unexpected and this was at the end where she’s upset/unhappy as stereotypically