We went to Sheffield to see the recent documentary - Amy, which was all about Amy Winehouse. We looked at how she was portrayed by the media, how that influenced her ways as well as how her father played a part in it all.

1. CASE STUDY: AMY WINEHOUSE DOCUMENTARY

2. We went to Sheffield to watch the Amy Winehouse Documentary that was showing. As we
watched it, I felt moved and felt sympathy for Amy as it helped me to understand her
situation more. The flashing lights effect that was used during the scenes where she was
bombarded with reporters and photographers was effective because it included the audience,
let the audience know what it was like to have the light flashing in their eyes every so often
and it hurt my eyes. It also gave me that feeling of being surrounded myself by those people
– it was definitely a documentary that made me understand the feelings of the singer.
The use of archived footage allowed us to have an insight, to understand better what Amy
was like before she became famous – so we could try to understand how fame had changed
who she was or what changed her into who she became.
Overall, I felt like her life had much more potential but
I also feel sympathy, once more, for the singer. She
was pushed over the edge again and again, always
pressured by newspaper companies who would follow
her when she went to rehab, who would always
question her about what she’d be doing next.

3. The lyrics to Winehouse’s songs now do have a lot of meaning to them in my opinion, more
than I knew as now I know that she based a lot of her songs off of her life experiences. Such as
“Rehab” being based off of how all of her friends would tell her that she needed to go to rehab
but she refused, especially because her father also said she didn’t need it and she would
believe him. The lyrics became more meaningful as we knew more about her as we could
understand the meaning of the lyrics, we could understand what she was thinking at the time
of writing her songs.
The media didn’t help when covering her issue either as
they were everywhere whenever she was trying to recover.
They booked out rooms in a hotel that was the same one
Amy was residing in at the time of recovering.
As she recovered, they often pestered her to hear out for
news from her – finding and pointing out all negative
things about her. From what is recall from the
documentary, they often asked her about her drug issues
as though it was norm which had led her to thinking that
doing drugs became the norm.

4. I looked at the site mediaknowall.com at the “Dead
Pop Stars” page and read through it.
In summary, stars whom are dead are seen as the
ones who bring in more money, their “star power
still remains” even if they have passed away.
A quote I found on that website perfectly
summarized it all up in my opinion.
"Dead rock stars appeal to people because their
death allows something nebulous to become a story
with a beginning, a middle and an end," says Pat
Gilbert, editor of the music magazine Mojo.
This works well in my opinion as pop stars give us
that semi-mythological role models as they are who
we aspire to be. “They are too busy living out the
dreams of the masses to work out who they really
want to be.”

5. Applying Richard Dyer’s “star theory” to the
idea presented before, that dead pop stars still
live on in the eyes of fans – we can look at his
idea of “the audience seeks to complete the
image of the star”.
This idea of his can help us talk about how
dead pop stars do complete this image. The
audience need not seek to try and complete it
as their life story has been told completely as
their end has already been drawn near.
Though this can be the alternate as well as the
audience may not be able to complete this
“image of the star” due to them not living a full
life. This means that the completed image of
the star, Amy Winehouse, will continue to
elude fans which has led to her ever-growing
fame ever since what had happened to her.
It can also be noted that Amy gained her
fame and kept it because of the “common
values” held by all those in the music
industry, the stereotypes of them all as she
was the type to fall into the category of
“conspicuous consumption” as she did
consume drugs which brought her end.

6. Thinking about Rich Welch’s 6 things a
good documentary should have, I think this
is a good documentary, even when basing
it off of these tips as well.
The documenter must have enjoyed Amy’s
music as to find out more about her as well
as liked Amy as a person in order to find
more about her.
The music used in this documentary was
tasteful, all, or at least most, were songs
sung by the singer and lyrics were overlaid
on the images/videos when her song
played. This was done in a tasteful manner,
as there were brief periods of silence, or
moments where the audio from the footage
was played and that alone was, there was
definitely those few golden silences in that
documentary.

7. I believe that music videos, album covers and websites can create an image of the artist that we
didn’t know of. Especially when it comes to looking at the lyrics in more detail – these forms can
show us a version of the truth we don’t recognize at first glance. If we look at Amy’s album
covers, we notice how she’s often alone in them, this can show her loneliness when she was
going through her addiction – but this can be seen as looking too in
depth.
It was seen as typical for Amy to appear alone in her
album covers, not just because she was a solo artist though
as many argue that Amy could have been feeling lonely
through these times in her life.
I hope to create some sort of representation in my album
cover like few would say Amy has done. I also like the
amount of colour she had used in her music video, often
making the text colour the same as a certain part of her
clothing such as in the “Frank” album, “Frank” is in the same
pink colour as the top she’s wearing in said album.