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MEDIA LITERACY AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE Strategies, Debates and Good Practices As a prerogative of hip hop, in Empire State of Mind, Jay-Z seems to address his song more likely to young males even if the duet with pop singer Alicia Keys makes the video also appealing to girls. Through a critical analysis of the lyrics and the interpretation of the metaphors used by the singer, we are exposed to the recurrent themes in hip-hop culture. References are made to drugs (”MDMA got you feeling like a champion”), money (“now I’m down in Tribeca/ right next to De Niro”), fame (“Now I live on billboards”), status (“If Jeezy’s payin LeBron, I’m paying Dwayne Wade” 1 ), misogyny (“good girls gone bad, the cities filled with them, Mami took a bus trip and now she got her bust out, everybody ride her just like a bus route”) and profanity (“Jesus can’t save you, life starts when the church ends”). It is important to be critical and through media literacy eradicate from pop culture these themes in that they are the values and codes of behavior that are being promoted as glamorous by the entertainment industries, exported worldwide and transformed into cultural norms and common sense. These are the codes that the youth appropriate, share and understand; this is the content of intercultural communications in the twenty first century. 1.2 From New York to Krung Thep Mahanakhon (Bangkok City) In this section of the paper we will analyze the music video Krung Thep Mahanakhon (Bangkok City) by Thaitanium ft. Da Endorphine (2010). The aim is to put the east and the west in conversation and understand to what extent the exchange and sharing of cultural codes may be considered intercultural dialogue or a form of cultural imperialism. Vincent Rocchio (1999) maintains that cinematic and media representations have ideological functions that can be determined by mapping out the interaction between a scene, its’ narrative operations and the coding of those narrative operations. As media literacy actors, it is our responsibility to critically analyse the interactions between mise 1 This metaphor alludes to Young Jeezy’s song “Kobe, Lebron”. Here the rapper uses players’ jersey numbers as the money paid for drugs. While Jeezy pays $23,000 (23), Jay- Z pays $3,000 (3) for a kilo of cocaine. 47
MEDIA LITERACY AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE Strategies, Debates and Good Practices en scène (everything that appears in the camera frame –actors, props, lightening, costumes), camera movements and angles, editing, image construction, sound, scripts and their arrangement in such a way to convey particular meanings. While in Empire State of Mind the music video starts with black and white shots of iconic places in New York; in this video’s opening scene the camera eye looks from the sky down at Bangkok while the Thaitanium logo stands at the centre of the frame. As the logo fades in the sky, notorious areas of the city start being captured by the camera. The famous sky train running through the Sukhumvit Road, skyscrapers, malls and fountains, the Chaopraya River that traverses the city and a colour picture of the Giant Swing are in the foreground accompanied by an orchestral rhythm. Thirty seconds later, the three singers enter in row one after the other from the right side of the frame. They are standing on the cross walk at the centre of an empty “Broadway- like” street. If we decontextualize this scene from the video, it would be hard to tell that the shooting took place in Bangkok. In these only thirty seconds, several codes from the west may be tracked through a media literacy lens. First of all, it is clear that Thaitanium appropriate the stylistic format and orchestral music genre used in Empire State of Mind. Secondly, one must question the choice of prioritizing cultural references such as skyscrapers, malls and the sky train running on the Sukhumvit Road over symbols that are better representatives of Bangkok and Thailand. Thirdly, Thaitanium’s entrance in the music video reminds us of the Beatles’ world famous Abbey Road album cover (1969). These codes appeal to people’s collective imaginaries and are commonly understood by one part of the world’s population as shared language. As Rapport and Dawson put it (1988), “the migration of information, myths, languages, and people brings even the most isolated areas into a cosmopolitan global framework of interaction” (p.10). May we consider this eastern- western interaction as intercultural dialogue? Is Bangkok City a response to the international community that ‘The Extreme Orient’ is not that far after all? In setting the scene, we immediately understand that the target audience of this video is not merely Thai people, also foreigners and westerners. In the first shot after the singers’ appearance, the camera looks up at the sky, the music slows down and the next iconic picture that appears is the Royal Palace. This is the beginning of a series of camera movements and angles that are worth analysing when pulling out meaning from Bangkok City. In the next shot the singers are all dressed in white walking one behind the other on the rooftop of a skyscraper. The leading singer raises his finger up to the sky (as Jay- Z also does in Empire State of Mind) and then opens his arms to the city. Ground and sky, earth and heaven alternate as the camera eye shifts direction. Thaitanium, ‘angel- like’ figures dressed in white and standing on the rooftop of the skyscraper overlook the city and bring homage to Bangkok – The City of Angels. Da Endorphine (the “Thai Alicia Keys”) appears in the next scene. She is dressed almost as the American pop singer in Empire State of Mind, has short 48
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