A History Of Music Video
It Is Possible to Place Music Video Into Genres?
Detailed Analysis Using the Key Concepts
1. Kate Nash - FoundationsThis video has high levels of redundancy; throughout the video the artist is lip syncing to the music as well as performing actions which illustrate the lyrics in the audio and therefore cohers to the theory of Andrew Good
win. This is shown frequently, but one of example of this is where lines such as "I'm holding on" and "I can't let go" are teamed with close-ups of the couples hands holding and then one pulling away. The genre of the music is pop, yet the video itself challenges the typical conventions. When we are used to seeing videos of sexually available women dressed glamorously showing mainly flesh, here we see someone who is attractive, but doesn't appear sexually available. The female character is strong in this video; the narrative is about a woman who feels the relationship is coming to an end - is it her who will break it off. As well as this she degrades the male, in the lyrics "Yeah intelligent input darling why don't you just have another beer then" showing a female superiority in intelligence. This is then followed by an aerial shot of a group of beer bottles and we see see Nash place a flower in one of them. This a
dds humour to the video but also shows how the character is beautifying the situation and how she 'can't let go.' Throughout the video it actually shows her pulling away from him, e.g. the aerial shot of them in bed (the repetition of these shots showing an omniscient narration) but the status of their relationship is also shown through the use of metaphors. There are many close-up and extreme close-up shots in the video where household object
s such as socks, watches and toothbrushes are featured, these objects are used to represent the couples' relationship and adds an entropic element. The narrative plays on the use of binary opposites (Claude Levi-Strauss) which is portrayed through the use of the inanimate objects. It's always the 'female' object which moves away, such as the white sock or pink toothbruth, and it is the female that we identify with. This very much goes against what Laura Mulvey believed (that mass media is dominated by the 'male gaze.') as it is the woman who is the active & dominating one and the male the passive, showing quite emergent & feminist ideology.
2. Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me
The beginning of the video establishes it as a typical American teen video as we see similar conventions such as the use of the next door neighbours. When the music starts we see the protagonist through a range of over the shoulder shots quirkily dancing to the music with a variety of unusual outfit changes (making the video both redundant, in the sense that it goes along with the music, and entropic because the use and choice of outfit changes is unexpected.) The video cohers to the narrative theory (Propp) whereby the protagonist is the hero, the princess is the boy she desires, and the villain the boy's current girlfriend. The Propprian roles are made relatively clear in the video, such as using close ups of the villains death staring eyes, as the video is targeted at a mainstream audience and therefore needs to be easily understood. The fact that the hero in this narrative is our female protagonist and the princess the boy shows emergent ideology as these roles are usually reversed. This video plays on the binary opposites (Levi Strauss) of the 'good' and 'bad' as well as the "cool" and "uncool". The media language is crafted in this music video to represent these opposites such as the bad character turning up in a red sports car, the red having connotations of evil. Todorovs narrative theory can also be applied to this video. The equilibrium is the girl talking to her neighbour, the disruption is when we learn that she's in a love with a boy, but the boy has a girlfriend. The recognition is then where she writes a sign saying "I love you," the reparation of the video is when the boy sees that he gets on better with his neighbour than with his girlfriend. The new equilibrium is at prom where the girl shows up looking really pretty as apposed to the nerdy clothing we've seen her in throughout the video so far and the boy realises he loves her.
Throughout the video there are a variety of over the shoulder shots and point of view shots, enabling the audience to identify with the characters presented. The beginning of the video amplifies (goodwin) the slow tempoed music by having long length shots of the two main characters, which also allows the audience to see the emotion behind them. One of these is an over the shoulder shot where the foreground and Taylor are blurred showing how the girl is focusing on the boy. When the music starts to pick up the pace Taylor is seen with a lot more variety of shots compared to the first part of the video and there are a lot more cuts as she really lets loose.
win. This is shown frequently, but one of example of this is where lines such as "I'm holding on" and "I can't let go" are teamed with close-ups of the couples hands holding and then one pulling away. The genre of the music is pop, yet the video itself challenges the typical conventions. When we are used to seeing videos of sexually available women dressed glamorously showing mainly flesh, here we see someone who is attractive, but doesn't appear sexually available. The female character is strong in this video; the narrative is about a woman who feels the relationship is coming to an end - is it her who will break it off. As well as this she degrades the male, in the lyrics "Yeah intelligent input darling why don't you just have another beer then" showing a female superiority in intelligence. This is then followed by an aerial shot of a group of beer bottles and we see see Nash place a flower in one of them. This a
dds humour to the video but also shows how the character is beautifying the situation and how she 'can't let go.' Throughout the video it actually shows her pulling away from him, e.g. the aerial shot of them in bed (the repetition of these shots showing an omniscient narration) but the status of their relationship is also shown through the use of metaphors. There are many close-up and extreme close-up shots in the video where household object
s such as socks, watches and toothbrushes are featured, these objects are used to represent the couples' relationship and adds an entropic element. The narrative plays on the use of binary opposites (Claude Levi-Strauss) which is portrayed through the use of the inanimate objects. It's always the 'female' object which moves away, such as the white sock or pink toothbruth, and it is the female that we identify with. This very much goes against what Laura Mulvey believed (that mass media is dominated by the 'male gaze.') as it is the woman who is the active & dominating one and the male the passive, showing quite emergent & feminist ideology.2. Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me
The beginning of the video establishes it as a typical American teen video as we see similar conventions such as the use of the next door neighbours. When the music starts we see the protagonist through a range of over the shoulder shots quirkily dancing to the music with a variety of unusual outfit changes (making the video both redundant, in the sense that it goes along with the music, and entropic because the use and choice of outfit changes is unexpected.) The video cohers to the narrative theory (Propp) whereby the protagonist is the hero, the princess is the boy she desires, and the villain the boy's current girlfriend. The Propprian roles are made relatively clear in the video, such as using close ups of the villains death staring eyes, as the video is targeted at a mainstream audience and therefore needs to be easily understood. The fact that the hero in this narrative is our female protagonist and the princess the boy shows emergent ideology as these roles are usually reversed. This video plays on the binary opposites (Levi Strauss) of the 'good' and 'bad' as well as the "cool" and "uncool". The media language is crafted in this music video to represent these opposites such as the bad character turning up in a red sports car, the red having connotations of evil. Todorovs narrative theory can also be applied to this video. The equilibrium is the girl talking to her neighbour, the disruption is when we learn that she's in a love with a boy, but the boy has a girlfriend. The recognition is then where she writes a sign saying "I love you," the reparation of the video is when the boy sees that he gets on better with his neighbour than with his girlfriend. The new equilibrium is at prom where the girl shows up looking really pretty as apposed to the nerdy clothing we've seen her in throughout the video so far and the boy realises he loves her.
Throughout the video there are a variety of over the shoulder shots and point of view shots, enabling the audience to identify with the characters presented. The beginning of the video amplifies (goodwin) the slow tempoed music by having long length shots of the two main characters, which also allows the audience to see the emotion behind them. One of these is an over the shoulder shot where the foreground and Taylor are blurred showing how the girl is focusing on the boy. When the music starts to pick up the pace Taylor is seen with a lot more variety of shots compared to the first part of the video and there are a lot more cuts as she really lets loose.
While there could still be more analysis, perhaps more micro analysis - taking the first thirty seconds and consider each shot, perhaps with reference to theorists other than Goodwin - there is thought and an honest attempt to understand the nature of music video.
ReplyDeleteIt is at present a level 3 with the potential to go into level 4, if more detailed research was added and a greater use of theorists were included.