Stick's blog- dizzee rascal dream

 

Dizzee Rascal Dream

Dizzee rascal is a grime artist who created a pop-hiphop-grime music video talking about his success and a message to inspire the younger generations. The surface of the video is a light playful setting created by the kids building blocks and the fact that dizzee comes out of a jack in a box. There is a story created of a classic lower-class urban area all on top of this woman piano as dizzee raps his lyrics. Puppets are introduced which are stealing a tv and then fighting the police this compared to a usual grime video doesn't not present itself to be as threatening and seems almost childish because of the light representation this could both be dizzee poking fun at grime culture and bringing awareness to the upper class. 

As we look deeper into the video we realise that all the puppets have strings attached to them in this old white woman's home who is presented as a normal human size. the strings represent that the puppets are being controlled referencing real life of the upper class controlling the country and most of them are white people. As dizzee is the only 'puppet' not on a string it shows that his success released him from total control however the old woman still controls when he came out of the jack in a box and her facial reactions shows that she disapproves of his actions however she no longer has enough power to stop him completely.

 Most of the stringed puppets are black to present them as "typical" criminals stealing tv's and fighting police with the addition of a stereotype which is a ginger drunk trampy Scottish woman this is maybe making fun of how the uk is stereotyped in general. The classic police outfit and the hoodies everyone else is wearing almost is as if dizzee wants to show that even tho he's made it he knows what people still go through and he's still a part of the lower class

The puppet on the left of dizzee is a racist representation of a black male possibly showing them together shows that they are still people no matter the amount of "power" they all have. The video ends with dizzee getting back into the box and the woman saying goodbye to dizzee. 

The old woman and the whole video is a spin off the old 50s show "muffin the mule" with Annette Mills where a mule toy is set on a piano. while the chorus is taken from "captain sensible- happy talk" who was part of a punk rock band called 'dammed'. who "sold out" for children sing alongs and that's why dizzee stated the woman is "too sensible" for him at the beginning explicitly making fun of captain sensible.

The Paul Gilroy theory of post-colonial views is an idea that ethnic and racial stereotypes are still created due to the idea of the British empire. This is directly proven by dizzee rascals video as the old white British person owns all the space dizzee  performs in going back to his Jamaican roots which England colonised back in that era. The post-colonial theory is played with very well in this video that the woman is a powerful British coloniser and dizzee is just using her land.