Music Video Theorists Research

In this post I explolre and discuss media theorists and their thoughts and discussions on music videos and how they apply to our production 

 Sven E. Carlson

 "One of the most common method of analysis is to break up the music video into black and white boxes. Almost everything is then percieved as opposites- trash or art, commerce or creativity, male or female, naturalism or antirealism." Essentially, Carlson is suggesting that the binary opposition in music videos drives the narrative forward.
Carlson also suggests that music videos fall into two different catagories;

- Performance
- Concept

Performance videos are self-explanatory, and feature the artist(s) singing/dancing/performing to an audience. Alternativley, coneptual videos refer to anything other than watching the artist perform.
Carlson theorised that a flaw presented by performance videos is that the artist loses their status as a performer as a result:

"He or she is a materialisation of the commercial exhibitionist. He or she is a monger of their own body image, selling everything to be in the spotlight - selling voice, face, lifestyle etc."

Michael Shore

 Michael Shore also concludes that music videos can fall into different catagories;

- Image assaults and Outre Folks (Over-the-top characters and gaudy imagery)
- Speed, Power, Girls and Wealth (forming the basis of a number of genres e.g. hip hop)
- Information overload (many things happening at once, causing confusion)
- Album Art come to turgid life (imagery from other texts related to the artist in the video)
- Surface without substance (the video is attractive without anything meaningful)
- Classic storytelling motifs (recognisable narrative, audience relation)
- Immediae Gratification (the audience are immediatley satisfied)
- Image and Style scavangers (the tone of the video has been borrowed from an existing text)
- Anasthetistation of violence through chic (aggresive actions look attractive, no negative reaction)
- Ambivalence (either in reference to character or situation, neutrality)
- Cliched Imagery (the audience have seen this many times before)

Roland Barthes

 Roland Barthes concluded that texts may be opened or closed, and disclosed 5 codes of text apparent in narrative;

- The Heurmeneutic Code (the way videos avoid telling the truth/dropping clues)
- The Enigma/Proairetic Code (builds tension/cliff hanger)
- The Symbolic Code (similar to sematic code, but deeper meaning shown through opposition/contrast)
- The Culture Code (considers audience wider knowledge, morality and ideology)
- The Sematic Code (meaning conveyed in lyrics)

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