Look carefully at the front covers of MOJO and RNR magazines.
QUESTION: How far do MOJO and RNR use different media language to create different connotations? (CONNOTATION meaning: an idea or quality that a word makes you think about in addition to its meaning.)
Answer on your blog. This is a high-value question and should take all lesson to answer. You can use the class blog search engine for more examples of how to analyse music magazines.
In your answer you should have 2 paragraphs:
- analyse the media language in MOJO and RNR magazine. 'Media language' includes the placement of the main image, the type of photography, lighting, colours, fonts, how busy or restrained the cover is, the layout (such as alignment to the margins), how serious or playful
- make judgements and draw conclusions about how far the media language is used differently in both extracts to create different connotations. Are there similarities in both covers? What sorts of audiences are they targeting? You could think about MOJO's rock aesthetic of living loud and dangerously compared to RNR's folk, rock, blues vibe.
- One of the magazines is busier than the other. Mojo has a much more cluttered and busy layout and style because of its numerous cover lines, images and puffs as well as a very dynamic cover mount in neon colours with a vibrant cartoon image. RnR also has many cover lines but they are all more minimalistic and justified to the RH margin. They are exclusively in white creating a calm, orderly, uncluttered quality. Equally the cover mount with its modest verbal play, unheard with its very plain and streamlined. Mojo's choice of colours is vibrant, electric and dynamic, particularly in the primary colours of the cover mount with its playful skeleton by contrast RnR uses soft, dull browns and only red as an accent colour.
- The Title and font of FOO fighters is a sans serif font. It creates a very colourful and expressive style that can instantly pull the reader in at a moments notice and also places the band member at the focus of the image.
- In RnR the main image of the man is meeting our gaze in a calmly manor rather than aggressive like the Foo fighters.
- Although both magazines conform to genre conventions. Both feature a star as the centre of visual interest, and both magazines celebrate that star, Mojo does so in a more dynamic, aggressive, confrontational way compared to RnR's gentle, low key folksy vibe. This is because Mojo targets a primarily male rock audience while RnR is aimed at folk and blues audiences.
- Although both music magazines feature many articles which is typical of music magazines RnR is more oderly and restrained.
- Representation of age or gender
- The celebration of older musicians- e.g. the photo of Nick Cave and the reference to Elton John who was big in 1970s- goes against stereotypes of popular musicians being young.
- The stereotypical representation of older people as facing an uncertain future- "there are a lot of grievers out there"
- The stereotypical linking of excess and youth but using a photo of the member s of the queen when young to illustrate a coverline about excess.
- The stereotypical representation of male seriousness and authority in the image of Nick Cave.
- The stereotypical representation of male artists as excessive in the coverline about Queen
- The stereotypical link of masculinity and warfare in the coverline.
* Explain how music videos use media language to promote their artists. Refer to the pair of music videos
you have studied from the list below in your answer.
Mise en scene
camera work
sound work
