Textual analysis of 1950 by King Princess for media coursework

1. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF 1950 BY
KING PRINCESS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxWTS25Tbk

2. NARRATIVE
• Although the narrative isn’t as obvious as one might think, the main gist
is a story of a couple breaking up.
• The video begins as a light-hearted set of videos about a couple in love
before subtly leaving the second character (the lover) behind whilst King
Princess smokes away the rest of the video, a metaphor for turning to
other needs in order to fill the hole a break-up leaves.
• The whole idea of the song is being in love with an idea of a person, an
imagined image that has been made better in their own imagination. If
you put the person you love on a higher pedestal, your adoration for
them becomes stronger than the actual love for the relationship.

3. CAMERA SHOTS
• The videos camera shots are split with two distinct differences: they are shot
with different cameras. A professional one is used to film the clips with King
Princess playing with her band on stage whereas a different camera, most
likely hand-held, is used with the couple and the narrative shots to give the
impression of being a phone or personal camera.
• The professional shots are mainly close-ups of the star persona, such as
stated in Andrew Goodwin’s theory of music videos, and wide shot footage
of the band behind her. Although King Princess is a artist on her own, the
musicians who play at her concerts are also featured in the music video and
they are known to be close friends with her.

4. CAMERA SHOTS
• The other close-up and mid shots used are there to create the idea of modern love being
recorded as with the shaky camera, being held, emulating this idea of home videos of a
relationship. The filter paired with them creates an overall sense of the footage being made
at home and King Princess is watching them back after the relationship has broken down.
• The shot of King Princess with flowers in her hair and a hand stroking her face allows for the
audience to feel involved at the close-up shot is taken from a slightly elevated angle to give
the impression that it is from somebody’s point of view.

5. MISE-EN-SCENE
• King Princess defies gender stereotypes
a lot in her music, and her style of
clothing is androgynous, suggesting
that it doesn’t matter to her. As well as
this, at the beginning of the music video
she has a pencil drawn moustache. She
spoke about it in an interview where she
said that if a man sang a song about
dating a woman he would be praised,
so she drew on a moustache to satirize
this idea about men dominating the
music industry.

6. MISE-EN-SCENE
• The cigarette that King Princess is seen smoking in the video has many connotations, the
main one being the flirtatious way she blows the smoke at the camera. To blow cigarette
smoke into someone's face is seen as an indirect kiss, as we touched on in Hayley Kiyoko’s
video. So, by blowing the smoke at the camera gives the audience the impression that King
Princess is giving them an indirect kiss through the video.
• 1950 is the only music I looked at the addresses the audience head on throughout the video
and addresses them directly. This is because, being a fairly new popular artist, she has to
appeal to her audience by mainly using herself as the model, as in Andrew Goodwin’s music
video theory.

7. LYRICS
• “I love it when we play 1950/So cold
that your stare’s bouta kill me/I’m
surprised when you kiss me” is an
analogy of back when queer people
had to hide their identity and their
love in public and is compared to
unrequited love.
• “So I’ll wait/For you/I’ll pray” She
plays with religious imagery here as
religion and homosexuality are polar
opposites with people being shunned
by religious communities for years
due to their sexuality and this lyric
reclaims this idea.
• The second verse of “I love it when
we play 1950/So bold make ‘em know
that your with me” suggest that
moving forward, they can accept
themselves without fear of the
opinions of other and what they may
think.

8. EDITING
• The entire video has a filter over it
except the last clip which is normal,
suggesting that being in love is like
having a filter over everything which
disguises the bad parts.
• There are a lot of stitching together of
videos with two on top of one another
and the different videos playing
different footage giving an impression
that many things are happening at once,
which makes the audience feel
overwhelmed.
• The footage of the band playing
reminds the audience that there is a
reality to this fantastical world of love
and romance and the sad way in which
King Princess sings reminds the
audience of this..