FAT LES - VINDALOO

INTRODUCTION

Actor Keith Allen, Blur bass guitarist and Damien Hurst collaborated to form the British

band Fat Les. The genre of the song is nationalist euro pop. The song was released as the unofficial England National Football song in

1998 for the France World Cup. The video connotes cultural diversity combined with

communal relationships coming together to share their passion…football.

TO WHAT EXTENT IS THIS A NARRATIVE

Shown here is where the protagonist is intimidated and softly-abused by the England fans as he has a ball thrown at his face whilst the others follow him in torment. (pictured right)

In this scene, the protagonist finally demonstrates his patriotism as he is accepted into the group of fans. (pictured left)

The narrative positions us upon a high street following one displaced man from society as he is then pursued and taunted by the mass group of culturally diverse England fans- where he resultantly joins them and participates in the rejoice. The narrative is linear; a continuingly flowing story which utilizes the proairetic code

to drive narrative through anticipation of the story’s ending. Because of the proairetic code used, the ending to the story has to be found out by the viewer

therefore persuades them into wanting to find out what happens to the main subject, the protagonist.

GENRE CONVENTIONS

‘Vindaloo’ meets the nationalistic euro-pop genre characteristics due to its use of: various quirky costumes and the patriotic sensation which is exemplified through the lyrics. Additionally, the typically used medium shots that have been emplaced which allows the scenery to have significant recognition and connote what themes the video is trying to represent.

LYRICS AND VISUALS

Everybody is marching and singing behind the protagonist throughout the song, to the rhythm. When the non-diegetic “kick it” is heard, a mid-close up shot is used to show the protagonist’s feet are kicking rubbish which has probably been thrown in his way due to his ignorant attitude towards the crowd and their devotion to the England team, but also I think this was featured to connote the football theme of the video. “Bonjour monsieur” is related with the character in the video who is dressed as a stereotypical Frenchman.

SOUND AND VISUAL

An example of how sound and visuals has been linked is when drums can be heard playing whilst one of the characters, who is dressed up as one of the queen’s guards, is drumming in sync to the music.

INTERPRETING, RAIDING, CONSTRUCTING

Fat Les’s “Vindaloo” is a parody of ‘The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony’. They have taken and transformed this music video into not only a football anthem, but also a comedic one too by featuring scenes of the protagonist being taunted in multiple ways such as the car reversing when he jumps onto it which caused him to fall over. At this very moment the lyric “ nah nah” is shown being said by a child who is pointing at the protagonist as though he is shouting “ha ha” because the man is an outsider and isn’t respected because he is not part of the community/group.

ß(Bitter Sweet Symphony – LeftVindaloo- Right àAs you can clearly tell, both starting scenes are on the same street, the saturation levels are blue and both characters are wearing the same style clothes.

HOW IS BRITISHNESS SIGNIFIED

. Multicultural people such as white sumos are meant to represent the stereotypical Asian sporting event. Also, people are seen wearing different costumes such as a nurse, maid and a stereotypical Frenchman costume, which consists of a stripy shirt and beret. All these costumes represent Britain as a multicultural diverse country which welcomes all kinds of nationalities, which is a positive representation of Britain.

The stereotypical nature of British people is to find that people from other countries are humorous due to them being different and this is shown through the way the Frenchman has onions around his neck, which is a stereotypical food which French people eat.

LAD CULTURE

Lad Culture is a subculture which arose in the early 1990s as a generally middle-class figure. Lads are associated with the music genre ‘Britpop’ which has a stylistic feel of Alternative rock.

‘The Firm’ is a prime example of what sort of costumes football hooligans would wear, for example the full body tracksuit. A brand which would of been worn in the 1990s by football hooligans is Fila.

The sort of magazines which these football lovers’ would read are FHM, Maxim and Loaded because they are mainly focused at heterosexual adult males in the United Kingdom.