Representation analysis

In Kendrick Lamar's 'Alright' one of the key things that is being represented is conflict between African Americans and police officers in America. I think the representation is not one that can be categorized as either positive or negative overall. It is obviously very negative with its tone towards the conflict and condemns it. Although some aspects of the representation, particularly the attitude of African Americans is a positive representation. 

This still frame from the video helps to show how the relationship between the police and African Americans is portrayed. The focus on the gun and not the officer dehumanizes the officer making it easier to feel dislike towards him, or possibly see police as one object and not a group of people. At this point in the video, there is also a voice over of Kendrick Lamar saying "a war based on apartheid and discrimination". This reiterates the idea that there is a conflict going on. This scene, as well as the rest of the entire video, is shot in black and white, perhaps poignantly considering the fact that in a general sense, the conflict is between white and black people. This could be an attempt to highlight a binary opposition between the white police officers and the young black community in America. 

 This long shot shows police carrying a car full of famous rappers down the street. This could perhaps be representative of Kendrick Lamar's ideology with regards to police officers with racist attitudes. This shot could portray how he feels he is morally above them and this is shown in a literal sense here. The performance of the police officers also helps create this image of heightened status. They look to be suffering in order to carry the rapper's car.  

This is another long shot that helps empower the African Americans in the video. They are central in this long shot, stood on top of a police car. Again, this literally places them above the police. This could be perceived as either above the law, or above the police officers morality and their attitudes. The muscle car surrounding them could also be interpreted as mimicking how the police surround criminals, turning it on its head. I think that this creates a positive representation of the black community in their struggles and conflict with the police. 

This mid shot of the police officer, similarly to earlier in the video, hides the face of the officer in order to make it harder to make an emotional bond. This could be to communicate an ideology of disgust towards police officers or implying that these are the kind of people that it is hard to bond with. 

This mid close up on the officer shows him firing a gun that he has made with his hands. He is also making a gun sound with his mouth. I interpret this to be a suggestion that police officers are somewhat childish in their discrimination and racial profiling of the black community. This creates a clear negative representation of the police officers. 

Despite not being relevant thematically to the video, it still creates a negative gender representation for women. This is one of the more negative aspects of rap: it objectifies women as sexual objects and this is the case here. Despite being in the video for only a second, having this woman here doesn't add any meaning to the video other than being there to look at. 

One thing I really liked about this video was the decision to shoot the video in black and white. It is a really simple thing that adds a lot of meaning to the video considering the subject matter. If possible, I would like to interpret something like this within my own music video if at all possible. 

To summarize, I think that this video has a positive representation of the black community in America and a negative representation of the police officers accused of racial discrimination. Arguably though it creates a bad name for all police officers as it doesn't show any good cops. Although the representation in music video is something that isn't shadowed in mainstream media in America. Until recent times police violence wasn't covered much by American TV but due to the outcry from the general public following things like the George Zimmerman shooting it has become something of a hot topic. Despite this, the entirely positive representation portrayed by the Alright video is something found mainly in this and similar rap videos. In this video, there is a much larger representation of African American's in a positive light than on American TV usually shows. This is clearly because of the two different sides of the coin; the young African Americans will have a much different perspective than the police officers who are more affiliated with government and, as a result of that, the media. An alternate perspective upon this would be to consider the negative aspects of the genre of rap which stereotypically is associated with violence and gang culture. It could be said that this video is somewhat atypical of rap in that it takes a more considered approach towards the conflict that other videos or songs within the genre. For example songs like Fuck Tha Police by NWA help to illustrate how this is not always the attitude shown in rap. Rap has often been accused of creating violence in society and has always been one of the main controversies surrounding it. It could be said that the Alright video shows a progression in the genre of rap since the late 80s and early 90s. This video also touches upon the negative gender representation for women, although it is not as bad as many other music videos in the genre.