Slaves - Cheer up London

Textual analysis

The beginning of the video is made to look just like a normal drive in a van with the radio playing in the background and murmuring from the driver and his passenger , I believe this is used as quite an alternative start to a video. The song itself is supposed to appeal to normal everyday people during the video it shows a businessman , a normal white van driver and some kids playing football in the park. This could have been done for a number of reasons; for example it could have been done purely to appeal to a wider range of audiences or to demonstrate the norm of everyday life throughout the video.

The video then takes a turn again I believe to demonstrate the problems of everyday life it shows a white van driver cutting up a cyclist and getting Into an altercation. This is shown to demonstrate to people that there is no need for this type of behaviour and to show how stupid they look. This then reveals the meaning of the video to show people there is no need for this hatred in everyday life and encouraging them to be nicer to each other, hence the title of the song ; 'cheer up London'. The video then goes on to a pop/punk sequence which is going against the regular conventions of this theory once again. There are cheerleaders and brightly coloured balloons , signifying to people that life can be a party and can be fun . This is used to clearly demonstrate how a situation can be twisted into a happy scene instead of an argument. I believe slaves have used cheerleaders in their video that would usually be accossiated with American pop artists to show that we should enjoy everything in life and give everything ago even if our taste does not suit it.

This does not adhere to Hodge and kresses genre theory as they said genre controls the behaviour of products of such texts. This genre is punk and the typical genre conventions of this is bright coloured hair and anarchy , whereas this video does include some aspects of this it is actually quite alternative and indie. Which leads me to disbelieve Hodge and kresses genre theory as they are basically saying the genre dictates the video which in this case is not true.

This shot again opposes the theory as the band are purposefully going against the normal conventions of a punk genre, although it could be argued that they ares till keeping some of the original genre by getting close in the camera shouting and basically being quite brash . However the Mise en scene and clothing choices are completely against the genre, I believe slaves chose to do this as this is predominantly their 'flagship' song and I believe they are aiming to appeal to wider audiences. I can prove this as this sort of Mise en scene is not evident in their othger videos , they have a pure punk genre to appeal to their stronger viewers and not disappoint them.