Easy to Understand Guide to 'Old Town Road'

hello and welcome to my easy to understand guide to Old Town Road by Lil Nas X this video is going to focus on media language and representation and it&#39;s going to be most relevant to those students studying AQA a-level media studies as it will be one of the set texts on that specification from 2024 onwards the wipe edit here from black feels very cinematic and it also feels quite old-fashioned like something we would see in an older movie we get the title of the song here as well as logos and small prints and that adds to this feeling of it being a film and creates a real narrative we&#39;re immediately getting signifiers of particular genres here in particular the Western genre so if you look up the genre spaghetti western um well nothing to do with pasta strangely but um certainly the kind of serif font in this yellow style um the kind of yellow almost sepia color palette to a lot of the shots and like lots of establishing shots of kind of grassy planes horse riders cowboy hats they&#39;re immediately identifiable as this idea of a spaghetti western these easy to recognize symbolic codes carry on the use of the bag with the kind of dollar symbol on it immediately to go oh okay they&#39;ve robbed somewhere or this is a money bag and that they you know perhaps they&#39;ve robbed a bank or something like that um so lots of easy to recognize narrative codes the introduction of characters here as though they were in a movie um and as they&#39;re introduced the camera freeze frames on them with their name coming up on the screen and this kind of whip sound effect that comes up on the screen at the same time and again that&#39;s very conventional of old style spaghetti western films but some audiences might be more um kind of familiar with it from more modern movies like Tarantino movies um Django Unchained for example does it kill Bill does it as well um so these kind of typical media language techniques might be familiar to audiences from a lot of different films and genres of course what is unconventional in terms of a spaghetti western genre is that all the characters are black and that was obviously very unconventional for spaghetti westerns which were mostly made in the kind of 50s to 70s I guess when it was far less likely for black actors to be cast in any roles particularly protagonists obviously also unconventional because the kind of Western times that we&#39;re talking about often supposed to be I guess the kind of 1800s to early 1900s when there were very few black people allowed in positions of any kind of power within America and it&#39;s these positions of power these powerful representations for example the black sheriffs wearing their badges riding their horses make them seem very powerful and these unconventional representations are going to be perhaps a little bit shocking for audiences and quite engaging who they&#39;re looking for a more modern context and so perhaps a lot of audiences are going to be engaged by the more inclusive representations Chris Rock is pretty much easily identifiable for a lot of audiences and if you don&#39;t know his face his voice is very recognizable as well he&#39;s been in a lot of other movies in particular comedy movies so it perhaps adds a sense of Comedy to the music video we see an image of a young white girl here who I guess is a spaghetti western movie would often be the kind of Damsel in Distress character she&#39;s certainly got quite a fearful uncertain face and she calls out with the word daddy suggesting she needs an older adult male to protect her then that we&#39;re introduced to Billy Ray Cyrus so Billy Ray Cyrus obviously another celebrity quite famous in particular within country and western music so he&#39;s going to be bringing in those fans of country and western music as well which ties in with the Western filmic type genre bringing in you know collaborating with another star another artist it&#39;s a great way of drawing in more pre-sold audiences and broadening your fan base there&#39;s also quite an unusual collaboration you know Lil nazex is a reasonably youthful young black artist who is kind of known for doing kind of shocking videos from within the kind of country but also the kind of rap hip-hop genres and then you get Billy Ray Cyrus who&#39;s a much older white man within the country western genre so quite an unusual collaboration and that perhaps adds to the sense of humor about the video the track out of the shot where Billy Ray Cyrus&#39;s character says oh you should be fine or you should be safe because you&#39;re with me the track out adds humor because it reveals the kind of white father and daughter sneaking up on them with guns so we as an audience can see something that the characters can&#39;t the girl does not have a weapon which suggests that she is weaker and needs protecting by the father and of course the um phrase everything&#39;s going to be all right juxtaposed with the sound of The Gunshot adds comedy because clearly it&#39;s not going to be okay but that phrase everything&#39;s going to be all right um adds comedy because you know there is this it does reflect kind of social cultural historical context that if you are a white man or if you are with a white man you are safer than if you were a black man on your own so perhaps reflecting elements of racism and racial discrimination within America&#39;s past the whip pan shot here to the bunker acts as a transition very handheld very fast paced and it adds to this idea of this trip being very dangerous and treacherous and chaotic you get these uh shots called trombone shots in the tunnel here I mean everyone&#39;s got their own frames for these type of shots but it makes it look like the background is kind of Disappearing behind the person it adds this feeling shock and realization so it adds quite a lot of fear here when he comes through the tunnel we get some shots where it feels like he&#39;s time traveled so we get a much more modern boy uh wearing modern clothing with a basketball and that is juxtaposed with the image of Lil nazex and his kind of Western old-fashioned clothing so you&#39;re getting kind of binary opposites of you know visuals and that makes little nazex feel quite out of place um as though he is now the odd one out in this community the boy just like the girl was at the beginning seems quite scared whereas she pulled out for her daddy he calls out for his mama um which perhaps reflects the more modern context of mums being the protective ones for children there&#39;s a lot of montages here of different people turning to stare at him as he walks through the town lots of slow looks long takes it makes it feel quite uncomfortable and it definitely makes him seem as though he&#39;s being othered if you look up Stuart Hall&#39;s Theory um it makes him feel very different and exotic and strange in comparison to the rest of the people within this town there&#39;s lots of him singing directly to the camera which is of course conventional for a music video the shots of him going on his kind of quest through this town we get medium shots and close-ups he&#39;s centrally framed the camera tracks um alongside him or in front of him behind him and that makes him feel quite important as though we&#39;re following him as a kind of hero or protagonist on his journey or Quest people are clearly shocked by him the shot reverse shots show their kind of quite stunned reactions to him and his dancing you even get a man taking a photo of him on his phone so perhaps reflecting kind of modern context of this idea of photo media selfie culture where we often take photos of things we see that are strange um rather than actually engage with people that we think are different or interesting or odd I decided to take a photo of them and that again adds a little bit of Comedy you get the binary opposites here between little Nas X and the girl that&#39;s done that&#39;s dancing um and it kind of reflects the differences between them but also draws attention to the similarities between them as well it&#39;s at this point that Lil Nas X on his horse has a race against a man in a car so again adds comedy value here there&#39;s a narrative break here which is quite unconventional in a music video there&#39;s some dialogue between Lil Nas X and the man with the car and the fact that we see the girl dancing on top of the horse in the background and the man with the car has to kind of turn and tell her off like we don&#39;t do that here um again it all adds to this sense of comedy and silliness and surrealism which little Nas X is quite famous for he has a costume change here to a slightly more modern Western outfit and it&#39;s black and it&#39;s kind of got lots of sparkles on it makes it feel kind of um quite powerful and perhaps wealthier and more successful as though in this Modern World Lil nazex as a black man can succeed he exits a shop and the camera tracks back and we see the whole of the shop front perhaps reflects this idea of consumerism and and capitalist culture they speed off in the car together um which I guess you know cars and speed and racing is a kind of convention more of the rap genre than of the country genre and shots of people playing bingo in a bingo hall here which again is quite an odd thing to put in context uh next to a young black man it&#39;s something we associate with like older white people um and again that adds quite a lot of Comedy it makes him and Billy Ray Cyrus I guess seem a little bit out of place here and that&#39;s again emphasized by the break in the music the silence and the way everyone turns to stare but then we see them performing on the stage in the bingo hall and there&#39;s a lot of line dancing going on line dancing is quite a conventional country and western dance um it makes it seem like everyone&#39;s having a lot of fun like as though they&#39;ve embraced him um and as though he&#39;s welcome there and is entertaining them they&#39;re taking photos um so it&#39;s a much more inclusive and welcoming atmosphere than the old western part was in the beginning of the music video there are a lot of Cameo roles here from other celebrities who audiences may or may not be familiar with so for example simple the person playing the deputy at the beginning um is uh haha Davis he&#39;s a comedian he&#39;s also quite famous on social media the person playing the kind of washboard uh in the bingo hall is a DJ called Diplo the man who is playing the car racer is a rapper called Vince stapler the Bingo caller is a lady called Rico nasty who is a rapper um the person playing the kind of mechanic as they kind of stop and stare as he walks past uh is Young Keo who happens to also be the producer of the song there&#39;s also the white-hearted cowboy who is Josie who is a rapper who wrote a verse on the song as well so there&#39;s quite a lot of um people who were famous Within the Music Industry in particular within the rap industry who have been given Cameo roles within this that helps to broaden out the audience brings in their fans as well um and it also kind of represents I guess little Nas X has been quite popular but he&#39;s got all these celebrity friends that want to be in his video men in the video are obviously represented as reasonably powerful you know they&#39;re armed they&#39;re in positions of power like the police they&#39;re involved in crime um and they&#39;re often quite admired but they&#39;re also quite playful and fun as well so men certainly quite important and Central to the narratives within the music video and that&#39;s quite conventional for both um rap modern music country western music so reasonably conventional representations of men women are basically background characters in this they&#39;re either kind of victims at the beginning like damsels in distress or the kind of background characters that don&#39;t really do anything um so again this is quite conventional particularly of certain genres of music um minimizing women um and and maximizing the amount of screen time for men of course the representation in this video is being quite masculine and powerful and important and dominant um whilst also being quite flamboyant and unusual that representation and the way that audiences respond to that representation might well be different if they know that in real life he is gay our ideas of what masculinity is and what masculinity is for a gay man versus masculinity for a straight man you know people often make a lot of assumptions and and have a lot of stereotypical ideas in their head so people may well see the more flamboyant side of him and focus on that if that they&#39;re aware he&#39;s a gay man of course featuring a gay man within a country and western genre is very un uh conventional and also within the kind of rap genres any modern music actually so um you know being quite open about his sexuality albeit not you know tackled at all within the narrative it&#39;s not mentioned and it&#39;s not featured within the narrative um it&#39;s a way of encouraging audiences who perhaps might want that representation within the videos that they watch post-modern video you know it&#39;s a it&#39;s a big mixture of genres that normally wouldn&#39;t be put together like rap and country and western music um it&#39;s got lots of kind of intertextual references to spaghetti western movies potentially Tarantino movies um it&#39;s kind of homage to those genres um it&#39;s got lots of kind of intertextual references to other artists the music also samples other traps as well which is quite conventional for postmodern music um so for example it has a uses a kind of banjo sample from The Nine Inch Nails song 34 ghosts uh some surreal imagery so it is quite a post-modern music video and post-modern music videos are quite popular the first version of the song was released in 2019 and was primarily promoted on Tick Tock with lots of people turning the song into various short videos and memes and that&#39;s what shot the song to success and led to the music video being created the original music video was archive footage from uh mostly country and western video games like Red Dead Redemption so when this song was released it was classified as country and western and certainly has a lot of elements of country and western music and movies however when it was in the Billboard charts um for what they call their hot country chart for country in western New music it was actually removed because billboard said that it wasn&#39;t country enough um and so um some people believed that it didn&#39;t represent enough genre signifiers it didn&#39;t connote that genre enough to audiences many audiences reacted quite badly to Billboard&#39;s decision to remove the song from the country and western chart and a lot of audiences assumed that this was to do with deep-reated homophobia and racism Within the Music Industry after the song was withdrawn from the country and western music charts by billboard Lil Nas X partnered with Billy Ray Cyrus to create the music video so the music video is deliberately overly country and westernized with lots of genre signifiers almost as a kind of bit of an ironic nod to the fact that when the actual song was released billboard didn&#39;t think it was country and western enough so that was my easy to understand guide to little Nas X Old Town Road don&#39;t forget to check out my channel for other videos that are going to be relevant for you and if you would like any videos that I don&#39;t already have just leave a little comment below and I&#39;ll see what I can do

hello and welcome to my easy to understand guide to Old Town Road by Lil Nas X this video is going to focus on media language and representation and it&amp;#39;s going to be most relevant to those students studying AQA a-level media studies as it will be one of the set texts on that specification from 2024 onwards the wipe edit here from black feels very cinematic and it also feels quite old-fashioned like something we would see in an older movie we get the title of the song here as well as logos and small prints and that adds to this feeling of it being a film and creates a real narrative we&amp;#39;re immediately getting signifiers of particular genres here in particular the Western genre so if you look up the genre spaghetti western um well nothing to do with pasta strangely but um certainly the kind of serif font in this yellow style um the kind of yellow almost sepia color palette to a lot of the shots and like lots of establishing shots of kind of grassy planes horse riders cowboy hats they&amp;#39;re immediately identifiable as this idea of a spaghetti western these easy to recognize symbolic codes carry on the use of the bag with the kind of dollar symbol on it immediately to go oh okay they&amp;#39;ve robbed somewhere or this is a money bag and that they you know perhaps they&amp;#39;ve robbed a bank or something like that um so lots of easy to recognize narrative codes the introduction of characters here as though they were in a movie um and as they&amp;#39;re introduced the camera freeze frames on them with their name coming up on the screen and this kind of whip sound effect that comes up on the screen at the same time and again that&amp;#39;s very conventional of old style spaghetti western films but some audiences might be more um kind of familiar with it from more modern movies like Tarantino movies um Django Unchained for example does it kill Bill does it as well um so these kind of typical media language techniques might be familiar to audiences from a lot of different films and genres of course what is unconventional in terms of a spaghetti western genre is that all the characters are black and that was obviously very unconventional for spaghetti westerns which were mostly made in the kind of 50s to 70s I guess when it was far less likely for black actors to be cast in any roles particularly protagonists obviously also unconventional because the kind of Western times that we&amp;#39;re talking about often supposed to be I guess the kind of 1800s to early 1900s when there were very few black people allowed in positions of any kind of power within America and it&amp;#39;s these positions of power these powerful representations for example the black sheriffs wearing their badges riding their horses make them seem very powerful and these unconventional representations are going to be perhaps a little bit shocking for audiences and quite engaging who they&amp;#39;re looking for a more modern context and so perhaps a lot of audiences are going to be engaged by the more inclusive representations Chris Rock is pretty much easily identifiable for a lot of audiences and if you don&amp;#39;t know his face his voice is very recognizable as well he&amp;#39;s been in a lot of other movies in particular comedy movies so it perhaps adds a sense of Comedy to the music video we see an image of a young white girl here who I guess is a spaghetti western movie would often be the kind of Damsel in Distress character she&amp;#39;s certainly got quite a fearful uncertain face and she calls out with the word daddy suggesting she needs an older adult male to protect her then that we&amp;#39;re introduced to Billy Ray Cyrus so Billy Ray Cyrus obviously another celebrity quite famous in particular within country and western music so he&amp;#39;s going to be bringing in those fans of country and western music as well which ties in with the Western filmic type genre bringing in you know collaborating with another star another artist it&amp;#39;s a great way of drawing in more pre-sold audiences and broadening your fan base there&amp;#39;s also quite an unusual collaboration you know Lil nazex is a reasonably youthful young black artist who is kind of known for doing kind of shocking videos from within the kind of country but also the kind of rap hip-hop genres and then you get Billy Ray Cyrus who&amp;#39;s a much older white man within the country western genre so quite an unusual collaboration and that perhaps adds to the sense of humor about the video the track out of the shot where Billy Ray Cyrus&amp;#39;s character says oh you should be fine or you should be safe because you&amp;#39;re with me the track out adds humor because it reveals the kind of white father and daughter sneaking up on them with guns so we as an audience can see something that the characters can&amp;#39;t the girl does not have a weapon which suggests that she is weaker and needs protecting by the father and of course the um phrase everything&amp;#39;s going to be all right juxtaposed with the sound of The Gunshot adds comedy because clearly it&amp;#39;s not going to be okay but that phrase everything&amp;#39;s going to be all right um adds comedy because you know there is this it does reflect kind of social cultural historical context that if you are a white man or if you are with a white man you are safer than if you were a black man on your own so perhaps reflecting elements of racism and racial discrimination within America&amp;#39;s past the whip pan shot here to the bunker acts as a transition very handheld very fast paced and it adds to this idea of this trip being very dangerous and treacherous and chaotic you get these uh shots called trombone shots in the tunnel here I mean everyone&amp;#39;s got their own frames for these type of shots but it makes it look like the background is kind of Disappearing behind the person it adds this feeling shock and realization so it adds quite a lot of fear here when he comes through the tunnel we get some shots where it feels like he&amp;#39;s time traveled so we get a much more modern boy uh wearing modern clothing with a basketball and that is juxtaposed with the image of Lil nazex and his kind of Western old-fashioned clothing so you&amp;#39;re getting kind of binary opposites of you know visuals and that makes little nazex feel quite out of place um as though he is now the odd one out in this community the boy just like the girl was at the beginning seems quite scared whereas she pulled out for her daddy he calls out for his mama um which perhaps reflects the more modern context of mums being the protective ones for children there&amp;#39;s a lot of montages here of different people turning to stare at him as he walks through the town lots of slow looks long takes it makes it feel quite uncomfortable and it definitely makes him seem as though he&amp;#39;s being othered if you look up Stuart Hall&amp;#39;s Theory um it makes him feel very different and exotic and strange in comparison to the rest of the people within this town there&amp;#39;s lots of him singing directly to the camera which is of course conventional for a music video the shots of him going on his kind of quest through this town we get medium shots and close-ups he&amp;#39;s centrally framed the camera tracks um alongside him or in front of him behind him and that makes him feel quite important as though we&amp;#39;re following him as a kind of hero or protagonist on his journey or Quest people are clearly shocked by him the shot reverse shots show their kind of quite stunned reactions to him and his dancing you even get a man taking a photo of him on his phone so perhaps reflecting kind of modern context of this idea of photo media selfie culture where we often take photos of things we see that are strange um rather than actually engage with people that we think are different or interesting or odd I decided to take a photo of them and that again adds a little bit of Comedy you get the binary opposites here between little Nas X and the girl that&amp;#39;s done that&amp;#39;s dancing um and it kind of reflects the differences between them but also draws attention to the similarities between them as well it&amp;#39;s at this point that Lil Nas X on his horse has a race against a man in a car so again adds comedy value here there&amp;#39;s a narrative break here which is quite unconventional in a music video there&amp;#39;s some dialogue between Lil Nas X and the man with the car and the fact that we see the girl dancing on top of the horse in the background and the man with the car has to kind of turn and tell her off like we don&amp;#39;t do that here um again it all adds to this sense of comedy and silliness and surrealism which little Nas X is quite famous for he has a costume change here to a slightly more modern Western outfit and it&amp;#39;s black and it&amp;#39;s kind of got lots of sparkles on it makes it feel kind of um quite powerful and perhaps wealthier and more successful as though in this Modern World Lil nazex as a black man can succeed he exits a shop and the camera tracks back and we see the whole of the shop front perhaps reflects this idea of consumerism and and capitalist culture they speed off in the car together um which I guess you know cars and speed and racing is a kind of convention more of the rap genre than of the country genre and shots of people playing bingo in a bingo hall here which again is quite an odd thing to put in context uh next to a young black man it&amp;#39;s something we associate with like older white people um and again that adds quite a lot of Comedy it makes him and Billy Ray Cyrus I guess seem a little bit out of place here and that&amp;#39;s again emphasized by the break in the music the silence and the way everyone turns to stare but then we see them performing on the stage in the bingo hall and there&amp;#39;s a lot of line dancing going on line dancing is quite a conventional country and western dance um it makes it seem like everyone&amp;#39;s having a lot of fun like as though they&amp;#39;ve embraced him um and as though he&amp;#39;s welcome there and is entertaining them they&amp;#39;re taking photos um so it&amp;#39;s a much more inclusive and welcoming atmosphere than the old western part was in the beginning of the music video there are a lot of Cameo roles here from other celebrities who audiences may or may not be familiar with so for example simple the person playing the deputy at the beginning um is uh haha Davis he&amp;#39;s a comedian he&amp;#39;s also quite famous on social media the person playing the kind of washboard uh in the bingo hall is a DJ called Diplo the man who is playing the car racer is a rapper called Vince stapler the Bingo caller is a lady called Rico nasty who is a rapper um the person playing the kind of mechanic as they kind of stop and stare as he walks past uh is Young Keo who happens to also be the producer of the song there&amp;#39;s also the white-hearted cowboy who is Josie who is a rapper who wrote a verse on the song as well so there&amp;#39;s quite a lot of um people who were famous Within the Music Industry in particular within the rap industry who have been given Cameo roles within this that helps to broaden out the audience brings in their fans as well um and it also kind of represents I guess little Nas X has been quite popular but he&amp;#39;s got all these celebrity friends that want to be in his video men in the video are obviously represented as reasonably powerful you know they&amp;#39;re armed they&amp;#39;re in positions of power like the police they&amp;#39;re involved in crime um and they&amp;#39;re often quite admired but they&amp;#39;re also quite playful and fun as well so men certainly quite important and Central to the narratives within the music video and that&amp;#39;s quite conventional for both um rap modern music country western music so reasonably conventional representations of men women are basically background characters in this they&amp;#39;re either kind of victims at the beginning like damsels in distress or the kind of background characters that don&amp;#39;t really do anything um so again this is quite conventional particularly of certain genres of music um minimizing women um and and maximizing the amount of screen time for men of course the representation in this video is being quite masculine and powerful and important and dominant um whilst also being quite flamboyant and unusual that representation and the way that audiences respond to that representation might well be different if they know that in real life he is gay our ideas of what masculinity is and what masculinity is for a gay man versus masculinity for a straight man you know people often make a lot of assumptions and and have a lot of stereotypical ideas in their head so people may well see the more flamboyant side of him and focus on that if that they&amp;#39;re aware he&amp;#39;s a gay man of course featuring a gay man within a country and western genre is very un uh conventional and also within the kind of rap genres any modern music actually so um you know being quite open about his sexuality albeit not you know tackled at all within the narrative it&amp;#39;s not mentioned and it&amp;#39;s not featured within the narrative um it&amp;#39;s a way of encouraging audiences who perhaps might want that representation within the videos that they watch post-modern video you know it&amp;#39;s a it&amp;#39;s a big mixture of genres that normally wouldn&amp;#39;t be put together like rap and country and western music um it&amp;#39;s got lots of kind of intertextual references to spaghetti western movies potentially Tarantino movies um it&amp;#39;s kind of homage to those genres um it&amp;#39;s got lots of kind of intertextual references to other artists the music also samples other traps as well which is quite conventional for postmodern music um so for example it has a uses a kind of banjo sample from The Nine Inch Nails song 34 ghosts uh some surreal imagery so it is quite a post-modern music video and post-modern music videos are quite popular the first version of the song was released in 2019 and was primarily promoted on Tick Tock with lots of people turning the song into various short videos and memes and that&amp;#39;s what shot the song to success and led to the music video being created the original music video was archive footage from uh mostly country and western video games like Red Dead Redemption so when this song was released it was classified as country and western and certainly has a lot of elements of country and western music and movies however when it was in the Billboard charts um for what they call their hot country chart for country in western New music it was actually removed because billboard said that it wasn&amp;#39;t country enough um and so um some people believed that it didn&amp;#39;t represent enough genre signifiers it didn&amp;#39;t connote that genre enough to audiences many audiences reacted quite badly to Billboard&amp;#39;s decision to remove the song from the country and western chart and a lot of audiences assumed that this was to do with deep-reated homophobia and racism Within the Music Industry after the song was withdrawn from the country and western music charts by billboard Lil Nas X partnered with Billy Ray Cyrus to create the music video so the music video is deliberately overly country and westernized with lots of genre signifiers almost as a kind of bit of an ironic nod to the fact that when the actual song was released billboard didn&amp;#39;t think it was country and western enough so that was my easy to understand guide to little Nas X Old Town Road don&amp;#39;t forget to check out my channel for other videos that are going to be relevant for you and if you would like any videos that I don&amp;#39;t already have just leave a little comment below and I&amp;#39;ll see what I can do

Transcript for:Easy to Understand Guide to 'Old Town Road'

Transcript for:
Easy to Understand Guide to 'Old Town Road'