RD: Analysis of Metanarrative - Galantis

Cover Art

 

•  As we can see this album cover is very abstract, it is the head of a cat with the face removed just leaving the eyes and replacing with colourful stripes and spots. The pattern with in the face gives an out of this world effect/futuristic effect. The album and band names are the only text on the album cover this immediately draws your eye. The titles are also in very clear font and are black and white causing them to stand out. The use of colour on this album cover brigs it to life and makes it stand out of its black background. It also looks like it has the eyes of an owl.

The shape of the head and the fur is an iconic sign for a cat. That it is a cat is an indexical sign that it is fierce, strong and independent. The pattern in the face connotes abstractness and that it is weird. This album cover immediately shows the audience that this album is different and disjunctive. As it looks like a cat but also has owlish features this connotes wisdom and night. These connotations are bound together by paradigmatic relations because it has both connotations from the cat face and the owl eyes.

• Dyers paradox is seen in this cover as the figure is present because it looks directly at the audience but is also absent because this creature does not exist. This cat like face is repeated in all the different album covers and videos of the band, so plays a large role in the bands metanarrative. Fans would recognise this cat like fan as the band immediately allowing them to feel like they know the artist. The reading path the audience follows goes from the cat face then to the band name then to the album name, this emphasises that the 'star' of Galantis is this cat like face. The incoherence of the actual people but just their representation as this figure increases the audiences interest into the band.

• Using Barthe's narrative codes, we see the enigma code is very present in this album art as the audience is left with a lot of unanswered questions such as what is this creature and where did it come from. This creature could also be a symbolic code for the artists metanarrative.

 

Peanut Butter Jelly- Video

 

• This video applies to Andrew Goodwin's critical frame work, as it followed many conventions of the genre of dance including; non-verbal language (dancing), wacky costumes and different characters. It has a disjunctive link between lyrics and visuals because the visuals are very random and weird. There is a high proportion of close ups in this video and the characters break the 4th wall by looking directly at the audience however, this does not create artist-audience intimacy as the artist do not feature in this video except at the beginning and end in the cat costumes. This video is fetishistic in the way it follows the lead female character. It also uses inter-textual references, both the cat character on the back of the coats and the cat person appear in all of the videos by this artist. Also, at the beginning when the car drives up it is playing another song by this artist. 

• The leading female in this video portrays Dyers 'star' images as she embodies many of the stars common values; youthfulness, sexual magnetism, originality etc. The artists apply to the two key paradoxes as they are present at the beginning and end but absent for the majority of the the video but the audience still know they are they throughout. They are also seen as ordinary because it is an ordinary place; a market but they are very extraordinary because when they turn around they have the cat like face. The star image is created for Galantis as these cat like faces that appear on all they're covers and videos rather than as the actual people in the band which is different so interesting. 

• We also see Barthes codes in this video, we see the enigma code because all this strange stuff that is happening in this shop, it is not made clear to the audience why this is happening this also creates narrative fuzz. We also see the cultural code because this video is weird because it goes against they 'normal' behavior we would expect and therefor against the cultural code, in the audiences minds this is not what is expected from this location in their culture. It also uses the action code through the use of the normal shopping behavior and the strange dancing.   
  
  
  

• We also see semiotics in this video as the location and props are immediate signs that it is set in a supermarket. In the opening of the video there is also an immediate symbolic sign of the market being named after the Band. The location, props and costumes at the beginning of the video are very boring and connote ordinariness and routine, this is why the strange behavior comes as such a shock and is so entertaining. We also see the cat like face on the back of the jackets as they are walking into the store and this is an iconic sign for the band as that image contributes so heavily to the bands meta narrative.