MERAL ZAHID

Our music video centers on the emotional journey of a South Asian woman navigating the complexities of a toxic relationship. While South Asian representation in mainstream media is often limited to cultural stereotypes—focusing heavily on traditional attire or overemphasizing ethnicity—we set out to tell a more nuanced story. Rather than relying on clichés, we aimed to present authentic representation that feels natural and grounded, allowing the character's emotional depth and personal struggle to take center stage. This balance helps break away from one-dimensional portrayals while still honoring identity in a subtle, meaningful way.

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During the mixed media effect, Whilst brainstorming for frames that would be meaningful for the viewer, I decided to include two frames showing the constant societal judgment experienced by queer individuals as the girl in a white dress is surrounded by all these eyes to build upon our Narrative in the music video and throughout working on this mini-project of mixed-media I had a mindset to put forward each frame to be enhancing emotions and add to the meaning of the music video. Emotions of heartbreak and loss of a relationship are also portrayed alongside bringing light to personal issues that many face in toxic relationships. The End of the f***in World subtly alludes to the protagonist's mental state as suicidal.

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Like many Indie Music Videos, it also challenges the heterosexual male gaze, as noted by Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Instead of portraying women as mere objects for male pleasure, it shifts the Narrative to focus on the breadth of emotion and relationships between women. Instead of glimpses and fast-paced shots of a woman's body, we have a slow zoom-in to capture women's feelings instead. Employing preliminary research statistics to support our decision as the audience collectively disapproved of the objectification of women and explicit content in MV.

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Our products use a cohesive branding font that we have used in our album cover, 'Crushed,' also featured on our Artist's merch, YouTube channel and website; our digital design follows the colour palette using the following colours: Red, Black and white, with each specified shade taken from our brand that was created as a collaboration between me and noor to prevent any inconsistencies in our design styles along with repeating motif that included the artists sign and his grey silhouette.

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To create cohesiveness with the Artist's star image, we used their name as a source of inspiration to bring elements of Greek mythology into our designs for the social media banners both on Instagram and YouTube. Overall, we focused on creating crisp, clean, and solid designs that were simple yet visually coherent.  

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Our social media presence on platforms like YouTube and Instagram has allowed our audience to engage directly with our artist, especially through the comment sections under our posts. We strategically tapped into the fan base of Crooked Kingdom, the second book in Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology, which has a strong following within the Grishaverse community online. The book features characters like Tante Heleen and Nina, who face emotional and physical abuse, particularly in the context of exploitation and power dynamics—parallels that resonate with the themes in our music video. Both narratives explore the struggle to break free from oppressive circumstances and reclaim one's identity. To solidify this connection, we used the book’s cover image as the background for our tracklist post on Instagram—a visual cue that would immediately resonate with any Grishaverse fan

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Throughout the Music Videos, we have also used intertextual references to shows and books through the title cards that represent each stage of the relationship, including The End of the F***ing World, a Netflix show and The Silence That Binds Us, a YA contemporary novel that explores themes of grief and racism.

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Michelangelo, the well-known sculptor and painter, painted the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City ceiling. Through the paintings, it is known by scholars to show the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Bible, seen with visuals of the dramatic relationship between humans and God. Amongst them, one has become a symbol of intertextuality. The painting shows God's and Adam's fingers almost touching each other; this renowned gesture represents the creation of the first man with the Creator's index finger ready to strike a spark upon contact with Adam's hand. Taking the painting as a reference point, we derived the title Divine Realm for the Music Videos, recreating the painting using a silhouette of the lover's hands to make the connection to the source of inspiration even more evident. 

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The Music Videos takes a post-modernist approach with intertextuality, bricolage, hybridity, and fragmented Narrative, which plays around with flashbacks. As an Indie Music Video, it is conventional to break boundaries. Thus, the amalgamation of the types of Music Videos, such as Narrative and conceptual, in our final project makes our project more Indie. It follows a narrative structure as theorised by Tzvetan Todorov, which shows a story with equilibrium-disequilibrium-new equilibrium denoted by the title cards before each section of the storyline is explored. "Act 1: The Silence That Binds Us, "ACT 2: Space In Between", and "Act 3: End of The F***ing World" each show a phase in the relationship from the start to the End. 

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The Music Videos can be viewed as polysemic, aided by abstract imagery. The use of thread symbolises captivity, and the colour red of thread connotes danger and hurt. Being entangled in the thread could thus be interpreted as being trapped in hurt by being in a relationship with a toxic person. The stark contrast between the white and red of the dresses and through the Music Videos is a deliberate employment of Strauss's binary opposition where white symbolises peace and serenity, and red instead embraces the meaning of danger. Binary opposition is a technique used in many Music videos, so we have also conformed to the conventions of typical Music videos. However, since the colour codes may have multiple interpretations, such as red, which may be confused in context with love, and red thread for a lifeline, we can not limit the interpretations of the Music Videos to the Creator's intentions. For captivity, to encode the message further, I showed Zahra trapped in the TV with a red string around her eyes to amplify further the message of her being quite literally blinded by love that she fails to realise she is the one trapped in the vicious cycle of a toxic relationship. The interpretation is not only limited to romantic relationships.

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In the Indie landscape, many have found their way of self-expression when rejected by societal norms. Our Artist's stage name, Artemis, conforms to the convention, with his name chosen deliberately for its gender-neutral nature. It allows the artists to create music without having to label themself as a non-binary individual. Thus, the name is representative.  

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Stage names can be considered a Western concept as many Pakistani artists opt for a more straightforward approach by using their name as their stage name. So, in choosing the stage name derived from Greek mythology (A Percy Jackson and History Nerd was here), we rejected the conventions of Pakistani artists. 

The use of Western dresses shows a sense of disconnect that both women feel from their culture and surroundings. When rejected by society, how they dress is a retaliation instead, something to differentiate themselves to define their identity.

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The Music video employs codes and conventions of Indie Music Video as I used experimental editing throughout my post-production process, not limiting my creative freedom in any way or form, starting with a mixed-media effect. Instead of using a more conventional digital mixed media effect, I opted for a more traditional way to produce it, which created a unique effect. Recalling this choice, it was more time-consuming and effort, yet the product made this cost worth it.

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Indie Music Videos are known to have a not-so-big budget, and this is evident through their locations and costumes; the limited location and use of minimum and cheap props make it quite apparent that this was not an over-the-top production yet accurate to its genre, which was quite nice not having to go broke while shooting.

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Reflecting upon the past year working on this project, it required much research to get the references that worked in context to our music video and to explore creative ways to capture the storyline abstractly to attract active audiences, forcing viewers to dig deeper and look for a deeper meaning or what I look to call it making 'Visual literature.' If I had to do it all over again, I would allocate more time to learning how to create a green screen effect properly and try to play around with duotone lighting to add more contrast to the footage and not have it look too plain and two-dimensional. Despite these shortcomings I identified, I am satisfied with how everything turned out.

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Overall, we have followed the codes and conventions of the genre closely while employing intertextuality and mixed media effects to keep the audience engaged with the MV.