Magazine evaluation – question 2

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

For my magazine, “Indie-vidual”, I am aiming to appeal fans of the Indie/Alternative rock music genre. Indie and Alternative Rock are genres which have become popular over the past decade or so, but with more groups than ever before emerging from absolutely nowhere, different fans of different artists are becoming increasingly more common.

My magazine does not highlight or represent one particular set of fans. It represents the whole of the Indie/Alternative rock world as a whole, covering bands like Bastille, Two Door Cinema Club and Stornoway. The news, articles and quizzes that the magazine features are all related to the Indie genre itself.

To the right is a screenshot of my contents page “featured” section. As you can see clearly, there is a range of different artists/bands from the Indie/Alternative genre. As I mentioned, there are many up and coming artists as well as already established, successful ones too. There will be a mix of old and new Indie/Alternative fans, so it is vital that I include bands that all types of fans will be interested in and will read about.

But the first question lies with how my musicians are represented.For my feature article of my magazine, I came up with the band “RoodePelikaan”, who are a new Indie band from Eastbourne. The band consists of five members: A main singer, a bass player, a keyboard/piano player and a drum player. All of these instruments or roles in the band are stereotypical of the Indie/Alternative Rock genre. So that immediately establishes them as an Indie band.

The next thing that I have done to represent them as the stereotypical Indie band is naming the location in which they started. Universities seem to be an incredibly common place for Indie bands to start. An example is Stornoway, who met at Oxford University. This also represents them as intellectual and intelligent, which is something that a lot of Indie Bands are. They tend to write songs based on things that are almost unheard of in mainstream music. These tend to be subjects that are random and slightly odd – for example Bastille’s song “Icarus”.

A guide to who is who in the band.

The picture above gives evidence of the band members and their roles, their names and the place of their formation.

I have represented all of my band members as people who are very humble and respected. Indie/Alternative Rock artists never tend to be cocky or arrogant. They are aware of their talent but only choose to show it when performing. Away from performing, they are honest and very professional in their work, whilst artists in mainstream music, i.e. rappers tend to write songs about how rich and famous they are. I am yet to witness a case where an Indie artist has been arrogant or rude. Another thing that makes my artists stereotypical to the genre of music is their clothes, the mise-en-scene, the props and their body language in the photographs that I have taken to use in my featured article.

The screenshot to the right is taken of a particular section of my article. The text informs the reader of how the band feel about their recent success in the music industry. They claim that the success hasn’t changed how they act or who they are, at all.

Firstly, are the clothes. Indie artists are well known for dressing well and in styles that seem to tilt away from the mainstream idea of fashion. However, the way that they dress is quickly becoming the new idea of fashion – especially with young adults and teenagers. A lot of the clothing that Indie artists tend to wear is slim fitting and smart casual. Items of clothing such as skinny jeans, button up shirts with strange patterns and suede shoes tend to be the main sort of attire that Indie artists wear. Very few of these clothing are specific or famous brands either – so we don’t see much Ralph Lauren or Fred Perry. Indie artists tend to wear clothes which represent them as a person, or at least their social feelings. Individualists and “Hipsters” are well known for wearing clothes which they feel shows off their social ranking in the best way as possible.

The picture to the right show us how the band are dressed. Indie bands/artists dress smart or casual depending on the kind of music they make. My band, Roode Pelikaan, make modern day music which is stylish. Their clothes match the music that they make and the stereotypical image that Indie/Alternative bands have.

The location of the photo shoot is what I have picked as my main stereotypical feature when representing my magazine.