I would like to explore the tactics of communication employed by the SOAS Arabic Band, particularly in comparison to the early Pussy Riot videos we watched for last week’s class. Both Pussy Riot and the SOAS Arabic Band disseminate political messages to an international audience using new media. Thus, making their projects accessible and digestible for mass audiences is key. This accessibility often depends on the careful production of their music videos.
I found myself thinking about how we can relate the communicative tactics used in these music videos to conceptions of authenticity and accuracy we’ve been exploring in class for the past few weeks. Last week, we discussed how Pussy Riot’s project would have been less effective on a global scale had they provided an “authentic” representation of the events in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. However, through collaging a variety of video clips and audio recordings from other demonstrations, Pussy Riot was able to convey a much more coherent and accessible political message. In “A Song of the Homeland (Calais, November 2014)”, the visual component of the performance is equally important in creating an internationally-legible project. Like Pussy Riot, SOAS uses close-up shots of the musicians, which makes it difficult to discern the scale of their protest. Additionally, the videographer uses English inter-titles to provide basic background about the refugee situation in Calais, which provides the uninformed viewer with a frame of reference . Unlike Pussy Riot, however, the SOAS video uses audio recorded on-site, and focuses on personal interactions between the musicians, emphasizing their human-ness rather than their anonymity. I found that this gave an air of authenticity to their performance, making the project as a whole feel less “produced” than Pussy Riot’s. As for my questions: Did you find SOAS’s audio-visual tactics effective (in that they created a sense of sympathy or solidarity)? If so, did you find them more effective than Pussy Riot’s tactics, and why? Do you think the video aided in the project’s legibility to their international English-speaking audience?
