Just before the summer break AQA dropped the new list of CSPs for 2024. Some old material has gone to be replaced with shiny new stuff. Some went for good reasons. but there are still some headscratchers in the mix.
What I’m going to do is go through the list and I’ll say what I will eventually produce resources for and give you some initial thoughts. This is not going to be a quick task – my notes, and thoughts take time to produce and some of the pages won’t see the light of day until the 2024 academic year.
T.V. Shows.
The Responder and Lupin are new additions and are actually both really great shows. I’m going to be sticking with Deutschland 83 and Capital because I really like D83 and I don’t think Lupin does enough to warrant me moving. I might change my mind because I find Capital a tad dull and The Responder is compelling telly. That said Capital is essentially a period drama (like D83) so it is more resistant to becoming dated. I already have materials available on Capital and Deutschland 83.
Online, Social and Participatory Media.
The board have been both brave, and weird here. Brave because they have decided that students should look at Zendaya’s social media presence. Weird because they have stuck with The Voice.
The Zendaya move is a great opportunity to explore the media theories that underpin our understanding of celebrity and media (especially the parasocial nature of our feelings, and attachment to, people that we recognize but never meet in person – what Dyer called “the difference between the real and the reel”). It also gives us a chance to look at the way media profiles are carefully manipulated, and how that manipulation continues in the online age.
That is as long as she doesn’t decide to pull all her social media accounts, or leave the entertainment biz, or any number of unknowns that might affect this CSP!
Why the board persists with The Voice is a bit more of a mystery to me. I have written extensively in the past about this CSP which, on some days, probably gets more traffic from A level Media Studies students than any other group of people. The print run of the paper is tiny and the number of YouTube views for any content it produces indicates that very few people actually engage with it. Oh and it employs like 8 people.
If you want evidence of this limited audience the current home page features a video interview with Tokunbo Ajasa-Oluwa about the Black Unity Bike Ride. The video has been up for over three weeks but has only been viewed 212 times. The home page is also a bit shambolic with notices of The Queen’s death (only three days ago so O.K.) above a news story that she’s feeling a bit poorly (spoiler alert guys). This indicates that it’s being updated patchily, probably by part-time or intern staff.
Most of the stories still seem to be churnalism, that is a repackaging of press releases and other material sourced from other news organisations.
That said Vic Motune as the new editor seems to have injected some new life into the The Voice. Prince, now King, Charles guest edited the 40th anniversary edition and there is not a rival online publication which aims to speak for the whole Black British community.
My suspicion however is that Black Britain is far more diverse and that there are more specific media products that sections of Black Britain engage with. For example if you look at the profile of the CEO of Gal-Dem (Sereena Abbassi) and look at the companies lining up to work with this magazine “committed to sharing the perspectives of people of colour from marginalised genders,” you see how The Voice doesn’t really live up to its tagline.
I will repackage my notes from The Voice and construct resources for Zendaya in the coming months.
Video Games.
Hurrah! The really old games are gone! It’s a shame they didn’t go for one of the more recent Tomb Raider games to help build a bit of a legacy into this section but you can’t have everything!
Horizon Forbidden West is a solid AAA game to include in the course. Kezia McDonald rated it 4 stars in The Guardian (although she did describe the story as “a barely decipherable load of MacGuffin-laden sci-fi”) and it does what console gamers expect of the big ticket games. I’ll enjoy putting some notes together for this. It’s published by Sony, part of an emerging franchise and is bound-up with the company’s designs for the new generation of consoles.
The Sims Freeplay is still there, which is good, because it offers students a very different way of thinking about gameplay and gamers, and gender and all sorts of stuff. The board ask you to look at the game’s Twitter and Facebook pages so I’ll repackage my notes in due course.
And neither game has box-art to drone on about! The board do say that you should look at the cover art for Horizons (which is a bit lame) Walkthroughs are still going to be the best place to get good material to write about.
Print Magazines:
It’s all change here! GQ and The Gentlewoman no less! What is much more important is that the board have given students far more pages to work with than previously. It was always important to get away from merely analysing the front cover and the board are signaling that now you have to look deep in the mag for your evidence.
I’ll hit you up with notes in the future.
Print Newspapers.
The Mail is still in. The i is out. The Guardian replaces it. I don’t teach this part of the course so, soz, no notes from me unless I get super bored or something (highly, highly unlikely).
Music Video.
I don’t teach this part of the course either but I might just put something together for it. Lil Nas X “Old Town Road” isn’t recent (it’s four years old) but the combination of Yee Haw Agenda and queer country is pretty powerful stuff (and irresistible for a media-head like me). I’ve already got some context stuff up on Ghost Town so I might make a new page for this section.
Advertising and Marketing
Score stays in (sooooo sex-pest creepy) but Maybelline is out (kind of a shame as it still had some mileage in it)
That said the Sephora, “Black Beauty is Beauty” ad does everything the Maybelline vid did, and more. We got ballroom! We got overt politicization! We got visual references to Josephine Baker! This is a top choice and I will be putting notes together!
I’ll be postin’ up pages when I gets the chance.
Mr G's English, Film and Media. 
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