02 MUSIC VIDEO

Teenage Dirtbag

I have watched Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus and made a comic using ComicLife in class.

It follows the story of a teenager in a generic suburban American high school with not much self-confidence who just wants to fit in and be popular as the 'jocks' at his school. The video starts with our main character getting his bike knocked over by the car of his crush, Noelle's, boyfriend who doesn't even notice or care about what they have done. Eventually, Noelle notices how badly he is treated by the Jocks and approaches him at prom with Iron Maiden tickets which he enjoys and listens to (a call back to an earlier lyric of the song). The music video ends with the main teenage boy waking up and realising that it was all a dream.

The story that the music video and lyrics attempt to convey is based on childhood trauma that the lead singer of the band Wheatus had to endure when he was ten. Brendan B Brown grew up in a fishing town on the outskirts of New York, where at the age of ten a gruesome murder took place where a group of teenagers on illegal drugs murdered a child in the name of satan similar to his age one block behind his house in the woods he wood play in all the time as if they were his childhood playground. The murder Ricky Kasso was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt at the time of the murder and he loved AC/DC and would wear the same attire. His local community in their panic connoted heavy metal with satanism. This eventually led the AC/DC loving Brendan B Brown to be accused of being a devil worshiper as he was already an outspoken atheist. This ended up with Brendan feeling ostracised and like an outsider in his own home town which led to him feeling like a 'teenage dirtbag' which reflects how in the music video he sings and portrays the emotions of the main character showing that he feels as if it's him.

 The videotography in the video switches between two seperate scenes, the band Wheatus playing the song and the story of the Teenage Dirtbag. As the video progresses the stories eventually come closer and closer until in the final scene the band is playing live on stage for the prom of the highschool where the two scenes meet. This is the climax of the music video and also where it ends.

CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT

THE COLD WAR

 From reading an edition of The Observer from the 1960s I learnt that people were very worried about the Cold War.

With the rise of the Soviet Union to global power, the UK and the US were concerned about the spread of communism across the globe. This affected the way Russians were reported in the media and inter-UK Russian relations were portrayed. The Cold War is considered to have begun in 1947, 2 years after the end of WW2. This war was not what could be considered a 'hot' war in which active combat occurs, instead most combat is subtle and done through spying and gathering intel on your enemy. This was most prevalent in the media when Russian spies were caught in the British government and were subsequently prosecuted. However, in some cases spies would have gotten so high up in British government ranks that if it came out to the media Britain would be completely humiliated. So some spies would face any charges at all.

Western audiences were concerned about the Cold War at the time as they felt the spread of Communism meant their freedoms may be lost. The general public was also concerned about a potential USA vs Russian war. This was because of the first-ever use of a nuclear bomb in warfare at the end of WW2. The Cold War involved a nuclear arms race between the USA and USSR which if upscaled to a full-on conflict could've meant devasting damage and loss of life to each nation. A lot of this fear was amplified by propaganda produced by both sides of the war.

In this edition of The Observer from the 1960s, we also see how women are portrayed in the media. Women were rarely seen in headlines or on the front cover of newspapers as at the time it was thought that women should stay home and live more family-oriented lives and not have jobs. The 1960s were the very first rise of women who wanted to not have families and be a part of the workforce. We see three women portrayed in this edition, the Queen of England, Jane Asher and a drawing of a woman for a lingerie advertisement. In my opinion, the most significant woman to be portrayed is Jane Asher as she has no grand title allowing her to be there and is not shown as an 'object' to advertise a product she is on the front cover portrayed as herself in an article.

It is also noticeable how there is no colour print on the front cover of the paper unlike what we would expect in news today. There is also no skybox on this cover. There is a much larger broadsheet with 8 columns in it compared to what we would see today. These elements allow us to see how media differed in the past from today.