MMCCS2015 Media Theory in Practice Essay One – 2021

MMCCS2015 Media Theory in Practice

Theoretical Foundations Essay
Word Limit: 1000 words (excluding reference list)
Due Date: 5th September (23:59) (Week 6)
• You must cite a minimum of four academic peer-reviewed publications, including two
from the MMCC2015 Leganto readings and two that you have found independently.
You are welcome to use more obviously. Should your essay, however, not meet the
minimum research requirements for the essay then it will receive no more than a pass
grade.
• All essays are submitted electronically via Turnitin.
• Late penalties will be applied at the rate of 10% per day, inclusive of weekends and
public holidays. Any essay submitted more than seven days late will not be marked.

Marking criteria: You will be marked against the following criteria in this and the
major essay:
o Does the essay stay focused on the question? Does the essay do what the question
asks?
o Does the essay show sufficient critical engagement with relevant and sufficient
readings from the MMCC2015 Leganto unit readings?
o Does the essay show critical engagement with sufficient independently sourced,
relevant and appropriate peer-reviewed academic publications?
o Does the essay identify appropriate theoretical concepts & theorists?
o Does the essay show sufficient knowledge and understanding of the relevant
theory?
o Does the essay demonstrate critical and analytical thinking?
o Does the essay demonstrate relational thinking? (Does the essay make
connections between the media text and the theory, and to other theoretically
relevant ideas and information?)
o Does the essay use academic research to support the analysis? Are there enough
citations?
o Essay writing skills: essay structure, paragraphing, sentence structure, clarity of
expression etc.
o Appropriate and accurate referencing (in-text HARVARD style citation and list of
references).
o Is the essay of a suitable length? Is it between 900 and 1100 words, not including
the reference list?
MMCCS2015 Media Theory in Practice Essay One – 2021

Answer ONE of the following questions:

Q1. Critically discuss ‘Rich Man’s World (1%)’ by Immortal Technique (2011) from a
classical marxist perspective. Your analysis should utilise relevant marxist concepts
(such as base & superstructure, ideology, economic determinism, class struggle,
etc.), to demonstrate how the song ‘reflects’ its historical conditions of production.

‘Rich Man's World (1%)’ (Immortal Technique, The Martyr, Viper Records, 2011)

‘You get up and howl about America and democracy.

There is no America, there is no democracy,
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies.
The world is a college of corporations inexorably
Determined by the immutable bylaws of business.
The world is a business.
And I have chosen you to preach this evangel’.

For all my free market, healthcare robbing,

Stock stealing, retirement fund fucking with niggas.
Fuck your little credit card scammin’, jewellery stealing,
Crack selling, liquor store robbing mother fuckers
Shout to the hommies, Carnegie, OG, Willie Randolf Hearst,
Farouk, Rockefeller, the real Rockefeller,
My main bitch Leona, pour out a little Louie the Thirteenth,
Scott Rothstein, Jack Abramoff, hold ya head,
My Rothschild niggas: Let’s get this money!

I spend my day pairin’ America overseas

Pensions for the workers? Nigga please
Embezzlement etiquette, private settlement
I'm better with confederate rhetoric
From my mansion in Connecticut
Foreclose, evict hoes at the tenement
I twist words like a speech impediment
I hope you got good credit, bitch
If not, better get a new job with benefits
When I play golf with Niggas I get cheddar with
New money buys brand new carats
My old money bought your great grandparents
You got grills in ya mouth, I ain't mad at ya
I own every gold mine in South Africa
Thanks, baby, you made me a billion
Plus I own a building
For each one of my children's children, that's the shit,
Snort coke in the whip Miss USA suckin’ my dick
Yea what! Fuck the law 'cause real jail is for suckas
I go to country club prison you dumb motherfuckers
(I am the 1% fucking bitch)
You know my CEO corporate steeze please
Overthrow governments overseas in a breeze
Politicians in my pocket for a few hundred Gs
So if I'm never in court, my assets’ll never freeze

I got a job and house and a bank account

When I'm out, I doubt that's something you could say
And if not then I fake death like Kenneth Lay
Make money every day the world burns on its axis
While y'all struggle to pay taxes
I'm getting my money the fastest
Memos and faxes, shredded up documents
Slush funds through the corrupt continents
But they don't want me indicted
'Cause they don't want my dirty laundry aired when I fight it
Don't get my lawyers excited
'Cause what good is a law if you can't rewrite it?
I got CIA traders, dictators so fuck y'all whistle-blowers and haters
I'll invest money from Al Qaeda
In the bank 9/11 widows go to later
Capitalism’s who I pray to, fuck the state of the world
Money talks so what the fuck I need to say to ya girl
(I don't pay ‘em to fuck, I pay ‘em to leave)

You know my CEO corporate steeze, greed

I'll treat countries like the IMF, down on your knees
Real gangsters run the world, fuck what you believe
I'll cut down the forest while y'all niggas burning some trees
I'll get your family murdered for a couple of Gs
'Cause your working class money ain't fucking with me
You think rappers are rich 'cause of songs you heard?
My labels make the money and haven't rapped a fucking word

Yacht in the ocean coastin' with the sails out

Hey America thanks for the bailouts,
I made off with the Banco Ambrosiano
Got away scott-free like El Vaticano
Activists act a bitch, get mad at me
'Cause of my tax free charity
80% to the staff and company
And 20% to the homeless and hungry
The country gotta pay the fed reserve
Kick back to the banksters haven't you learned
You protest cops or patrols on the street
But I bought city hall, so I own the police
Email, Facebook and the shit you tweet
All the phone companies, so I heard you speak
My suggestion is your correction
No elections, sex with no affection
No invention would benefit the world of man
Will exist ‘til I got the money in my hand
World bank, interest rate damn rape on the spot
But I'm a gangster you gon' take my money like it or not, nigga
(I got your country in my pocket, motherfucker!)

You know my CEO masonic steeze, cheese

Only little people pay all these taxes and fees
Since you were born, we’ve controlled what you watch and you read
And pretty soon were gonna own the fucking air that you breathe
I take what I want fucker I don't have to say please
I'll convince you that it's good for you, take it and leave
You think presidents are the face of a nation
I put ‘em all where they are, end of the conversation

***

Q2. Give a psychoanalytic reading of ‘Rapunzel’ (1812) by the Brothers Grimm. Your
analysis should refer to some of the major concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis, such
as: the theory of sexuality; the structure of the mind; ‘dream-work’ etc.

‘Rapunzel’ (Brothers Grimm Grimms' Fairy Tales 1812)

[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2591/2591-h/2591-h.htm#link2H_4_0020]

There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child. At length the woman
hoped that God was about to grant her desire. These people had a little window at the back of their
house from which a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful flowers and
herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared to go into it because it belonged
to an enchantress, who had great power and was dreaded by all the world. One day the woman was
standing by this window and looking down into the garden, when she saw a bed which was planted
with the most beautiful rampion (rapunzel), and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it,
she quite pined away, and began to look pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed, and
asked: 'What ails you, dear wife?' 'Ah,' she replied, 'if I can't eat some of the rampion, which is in the
garden behind our house, I shall die.' The man, who loved her, thought: 'Sooner than let your wife die,
bring her some of the rampion yourself, let it cost what it will.' At twilight, he clambered down over
the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his
wife. She at once made herself a salad of it, and ate it greedily. It tasted so good to her—so very good,
that the next day she longed for it three times as much as before. If he was to have any rest, her
husband must once more descend into the garden. In the gloom of evening therefore, he let himself
down again; but when he had clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the
enchantress standing before him. 'How can you dare,' said she with angry look, 'descend into my
garden and steal my rampion like a thief? You shall suffer for it!' 'Ah,' answered he, 'let mercy take the
place of justice, I only made up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the
window and felt such a longing for it that she would have died if she had not got some to eat.' Then
the enchantress allowed her anger to be softened, and said to him: 'If the case be as you say, I will
allow you to take away with you as much rampion as you will, only I make one condition, you must
give me the child which your wife will bring into the world; it shall be well treated, and I will care for
it like a mother.' The man in his terror consented to everything, and when the woman was brought to
bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with
her.
MMCC2015 Media Theory in Practice Essay One 2020

Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was twelve years old, the
enchantress shut her into a tower, which lay in a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at
the top was a little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed herself beneath it and
cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'

Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she heard the voice of the
enchantress she unfastened her braided tresses, wound them round one of the hooks of the window
above, and then the hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.

After a year or two, it came to pass that the king's son rode through the forest and passed by the
tower. Then he heard a song, which was so charming that he stood still and listened. This was
Rapunzel, who in her solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The king's son
wanted to climb up to her, and looked for the door of the tower, but none was to be found. He rode
home, but the singing had so deeply touched his heart, that every day he went out into the forest and
listened to it. Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress came there,
and he heard how she cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'

Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her. 'If that is the
ladder by which one mounts, I too will try my fortune,' said he, and the next day when it began to
grow dark, he went to the tower and cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'

Immediately the hair fell down and the king's son climbed up.

At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes had never yet beheld, came to
her; but the king's son began to talk to her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so
stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her. Then Rapunzel lost her
fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw that he was young
and handsome, she thought: 'He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does'; and she said yes, and
laid her hand in his. She said: 'I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get down.
Bring with you a skein of silk every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when
that is ready I will descend, and you will take me on your horse.' They agreed that until that time he
should come to her every evening, for the old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing
of this, until once Rapunzel said to her: 'Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so much
heavier for me to draw up than the young king's son—he is with me in a moment.' 'Ah! you wicked
child,' cried the enchantress. 'What do I hear you say! I thought I had separated you from all the world,
and yet you have deceived me!' In her anger she clutched Rapunzel's beautiful tresses, wrapped them
twice round her left hand, seized a pair of scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut off,
and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a
desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.

On the same day that she cast out Rapunzel, however, the enchantress fastened the braids of hair,
which she had cut off, to the hook of the window, and when the king's son came and cried:
MMCC2015 Media Theory in Practice Essay One 2020

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'

She let the hair down. The king's son ascended, but instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found
the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. 'Aha!' she cried mockingly, 'you
would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it,
and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.' The king's
son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with
his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the
forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of his
dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at length came to the desert where
Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He heard
a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it, and when he approached, Rapunzel
knew him and fell on his neck and wept. Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again,
and he could see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and
they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented.

***

Q3. From the perspective of feminist media theory, critically analyse the lyrics and
video for Milck’s ‘Quiet’ (2018). You should consider the role of agency, sexuality
and gender difference in your critical analysis. [You may find the official video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl_Qfj8780M]

‘Quiet’ (Milck, This is Not the End, Atlantic Records, 2018)

Put on your face

Know your place
Shut up and smile
Don't spread your legs
I could do that

But no one knows me, no one ever will

If I don't say something, if I just lie still
Would I be that monster, scare them all away
If I let them hear what I have to say

I can't keep quiet, no-oh-oh-oh-oh

I can't keep quiet, no-oh-oh-oh-oh
A one woman riot, no-oh-oh-oh-oh

I can't keep quiet

For anyone

Not anymore

'Cause no one knows me, no one ever will

If I don't say something, take that dry blue pill
They may see that monster, they may run away
But I have to do this
I can't keep quiet, no-oh-oh-oh-oh
I can't keep quiet, no-oh-oh-oh-oh
A one woman riot, no-oh-oh-oh-oh

Oh, I can't keep quiet

(There'll be someone who understands)
There'll be someone who understands
(Must be someone who'll understand)

Let it out, let it out

Let it out now
There'll be someone who understands
Let it out, let it out
Let it out now

I can't keep quiet, no-oh-oh-oh-oh

No, I can't keep quiet, no-oh-oh-oh-oh
I can't keep quiet, oh-no
No, I won't keep quiet

***