Individual Feature Analysis

Link to the show: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03rx8jf 

 My feature choice to analyze is "Shanghai- World City Redux", a feature for BBC 3 radio station. It's one of the features that composes an ongoing series aired on Sundays at 18:45. 

"Shanghai- World City Redux" is perfect for those of us who are interested in the history of Asian countries and cities, and how they have developed in the countries and cities that are nowadays. So, the feature tries to illustrate us about the development Shanghai has experienced during the former century and the role and effect the foreigners has had in terms of oppression, but also as a wave of modernity for the city we now know. 

The presenter, whose emotional tone of voice guides us throughout the feature, makes use of several brief interviews in order to let us know several facts as well as the opinion of the interviewees and, thus, places us in the context. However it's the use of the music what achieves the goal of the interviewer: get us "travel across time" to the Shanghai of the former century and makes us feel the influence of the British in the society. Because of this the jazz music is very present throughout the feature, representing the times of modernity. 

This "travel accross time" is achieved also through the background sounds that places us, and makes us get in the mood of the feature, when the presenter moves on to a more serious topic: the effect it had the departure of the foreigners in the city; how all the modernization, the Hollywood movies, the neon, the jazz bands were all gone. Moreover, the feature includes archive footage sounds from political discourses and pieces of the novel "Midnight" and, as it was said, several interviews, some of them translated simultaneously while the interviewees spoke in their native language. 

The sum of this makes us, the listeners, get immerse in the atmosphere and the continuous changes the city and their population faced in such a short period of time.




Virginia Veros Moreno.