Jon Kramer's music theory: examples.

Song: Gangnam style.

·         This song is ironic due to its success despite the tune and lyrics possessing mediocre quality. It is still the most watched YouTube video.

·         It challenges barriers as it status as a successful worldwide MV is exceptionally high despite its low quality of production in contrast to other mainstream music.

·         It questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist values. Since the video is supposedly intended to be bad, at least arguably, its presence as mainstream music argues against other elitist high production, high quality no. 1 singles.

·         Music is considered relevant to the social context of women as objects of the male gaze. Hence the ‘sexy lady’ lines in English.

·         The music embraces contradictions as it is some fat, short, unattractive man starring as the main image in the video, yet despite subverting a media convention, it works.

·         It distrusts binary oppositions by disregarding the fact that a short, fat middle aged man is trying to dance around and hit on sexy ladies.

·         It encompasses pluralism quite literally by having a lot of people in the video serving different performance or narrative purposes.

Song: Dan Black’s Symphonies.

·         It is ironic as it uses intertextuality and bricolage to progress the narrative with new meaning evolved from previous texts. Despite its unoriginality, the lyrics praise the creation of the song itself.

·         It does not respect the procedures of the past as it is a pastiche of various media texts, blatantly ripping them off to progress its own narrative forward.

·         Questions exclusive elitist and populist values by using texts of such famous prestige and creates a pastiche/parody of these uses of bricolage. It questions what makes these media texts so great to most cultures and demographic groups by mocking them.

·         Music is relevant to the western culture as it takes various classic texts from it to create a pastiche which they should recognise and read.

·         Considers and uses the technology used from media filmography to create the effects required to make an effective postmodern pastiche video.

·         Includes discontinuities by suddenly having the protagonist of the music video appear in different locations sometimes without even any transition. Just to create bricolage.

·         Encompasses pluralism by using bricolage to create new meanings from previous texts to create a pastiche or parody and develop different readings from the audience.

·         Presents multiple meanings regarding the uses of bricolage. Maybe it is a pastiche, or a parody. Arguably, it might even be a homage.

Song: Kanye West’s Gold Digga.

·         It is a repudiation of modernism by containing an extension from a previous media text; I got a woman by Ray Charles. This was also an extension from It must be Jesus.

·         It is ironic because the song contains a subject regarding a woman using the male artist for his money. Its predecessor, however, praises the idea of a man having a woman.

·         Does not respect procedures of the past by containing the same soundtrack as I got a woman and it must be Jesus despite the soundtrack already being established with those songs.

·         Sows disdain for unquestioned structural unity by presenting the message to its audience that females are evil, manipulative, thieves. This argues against feminist ideals.

·         Relevant to the political issues regarding feminism and political and social equality currently praised and supported by the political system.
-          Embraces the contradiction that other music videos and media are postmodern and take references from previous texts, while being this itself.
-          Includes discontinuities because the character/protagonist just moves from location to location with little or no inclusion of visual transition.
-          It locates meaning from its listeners.