Art Music Video, Art Cinema, and Spectatorship in the Streaming Era
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FEEL IT ALL AROUND: ART MUSIC VIDEO, ART CINEMA, AND SPECTATORSHIP IN THE STREAMING ERA by Jeffrey Heinzl Bachelor of Arts, Furman University, 2009 Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 2014 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2018 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Jeffrey Heinzl It was defended on May 8, 2018 and approved by Mark Lynn Anderson, PhD, Associate Professor, Film Studies Program, Department of English Randall Halle, PhD, Klaus W. Jonas Professor of German Film and Cultural Studies, Department of German Neepa Majumdar, PhD, Associate Professor, Film Studies Program, Department of English Daniel Morgan, PhD, Associate Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, The University of Chicago Dissertation Advisor: Adam Lowenstein, PhD, Professor, Film Studies Program, Department of English ii Copyright © by Jeffrey Heinzl 2018 iii FEEL IT ALL AROUND: ART MUSIC VIDEO, ART CINEMA, AND SPECTATORSHIP IN THE STREAMING ERA Jeffrey Heinzl, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2018 This dissertation describes a trend in contemporary music video that I call “art music video.” This kind of narrative music video features striking images that disrupt plot coherence, prompting a kind of spectatorship that involves endlessly rethinking narrative events and meaning. These striking images leave spectators with a number of questions at video’s end that neither the spectator nor the video can answer with certainty; these disruptive moments emphasize that the art music video is essentially and intensely discontinuous. This dissertation details the connection of the art music video to art cinema—as an institution and global cinema trend from 1945 to the present day—and art cinema spectatorship, emphasizing the widespread availability of both art music video and art cinema in high definition on streaming platforms. The first chapter traces the form and key characteristics of contemporary art music video by comparing its narrative features to those common to art cinema, both as scholars have tended to define art cinema and within specific examples of classic art films that challenge these definitions; the second chapter focuses on art films that deploy pop songs to describe how these pop music moments call into question auteur-focused readings of art cinema and unsettle art cinema’s traditional white, male, heterosexual perspective; the third chapter situates the defiant work of Kanye West at the intersection of black cinema and art cinema by describing his work in the context of hip-hop aesthetics and Jacques Rancière’s notion of the aesthetic regime; and the fourth chapter takes up the concepts of cinematic excess and the neo-baroque to describe art cinema and art music video as promoting a spectatorship attentive to excessive surface and iv excessive depth. As a whole, this dissertation aims to chart the lineage between music video and art cinema, and to locate the art music video within a feedback loop of virtual, aesthetic, intellectual, and affective contexts. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. VIII 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 2.0 REDEFINING ART CINEMA THROUGH ART MUSIC VIDEO: NARRATIVE STRUCTURES, STRIKING IMAGES, AND WONDERING SPECTATORS ................... 17 2.1 THE ART MUSIC VIDEO ............................................................................... 18 2.2 DREAMING ART CINEMA ............................................................................ 26 2.3 INTENSIFIED DISCONTINUITY .................................................................. 30 2.4 ART CINEMA’S (CRUMBLING) INSTITUTIONS ..................................... 36 2.5 SITUATING ART CINEMA DREAMS WITHIN AND AGAINST EXISTING ART CINEMA SCHOLARSHIP ................................................................. 45 2.6 DISCONTINUOUS ART CINEMA NARRATIVE OUTSIDE OF MODERNISM .................................................................................................................... 52 3.0 POPULAR MUSIC IN ART CINEMA: DISCONTINUITY AND THE MOVEMENT AWAY FROM CRITICAL DISTANCE......................................................... 62 3.1 BEGINNINGS: LE NOTTI BIANCHE ............................................................ 66 3.2 THE 1960S: NEW WAVES, MORE POLITICS............................................ 73 3.3 MOVING FORWARD, MOVING BACK: TOXIC MASCULINITY IN BAD TIMING ...................................................................................................................... 80 vi 3.4 THE 1990S: LA HAINE AND BEAU TRAVAIL ............................................. 85 4.0 HIP HOP’S DISCONTINUTIES AS DEFIANCE: AN ART FILM AND ART MUSIC VIDEO FROM KANYE WEST .................................................................................. 91 4.1 DISCONTINUITY AND DURATION IN HIP HOP ..................................... 93 4.2 DEFIANCE IN THE WORK OF KANYE WEST ....................................... 100 4.3 RUNAWAY........................................................................................................ 104 4.4 “MERCY” ........................................................................................................ 118 5.0 EXCESSIVE SURFACE, EXCESSIVE DEPTH: UNSETTLED NARRATIVES IN “YOUTH” (2014) AND MYSTERIES OF LISBON (2010) .............................................. 124 5.1 CONCEPTIONS OF EXCESS IN FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES ........... 137 5.2 EXCESS IN ART MUSIC VIDEO: “YOUTH” ........................................... 152 5.3 EXCESS IN ART CINEMA: MYSTERIES OF LISBON ............................ 163 5.4 ART MUSIC VIDEO, ART CINEMA: INTERTEXT AND FURTHER DEPTH ........................................................................................................................... 182 6.0 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 190 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 198 vii PREFACE First, I would like to thank my committee for all of their help and support in this process. Randall, I appreciate you joining the team fairly late in the game and encouraging me with your enthusiasm about my project; Mark, thanks for your willingness to both criticize and contextualize my work—I always enjoy talking music with you; Dan, your discussions with me over phone calls and during brief return visits to Pittsburgh have been incredibly helpful; Neepa, thank you for your very detailed feedback on all of my work, regarding both its form and its content—I also deeply appreciate your willingness to let me borrow your library access during the months when I didn’t have it. Adam, the chair of the committee, thank you for helping me navigate a rather complicated constellation of topics—music video, art cinema, spectatorship—in our numerous meetings together. I especially liked those moments when you said, “There, write that down” (I can hear you saying it in my head) as a way of showing which of my spoken observations would be most useful for shaping the dissertation. Second, I want to acknowledge the incredible intellectual and emotional support of my Pittsburgh family: Javier O’Neil-Ortiz, Molly Kirwan, John Rhym, and Veronica Fitzpatrick. We’ve had so many great discussions about the terrible, terrible films you’ve made me watch. That’s a joke, but I do believe that these informal discussions—as well as the experience of just watching stuff, together—have honed many parts of this dissertation, especially the pleasure it takes in moments of shock and surprise and wonder. I’d like to think that any wonderful moment viii it contains is only there because we danced it there. I’d also like to acknowledge the friendship and support of my sister, Erika Deiseroth, who, along with my other family members, encouraged me to keep going when I was exhausted and laughed with me often. Thanks as well to the friends and graduate students—most of whom are now previous graduate students—whose work and thinking I admire for its imagination and rigor: Jedd Hakimi, Jordan Hayes, Julie Nakama, Ben Ogrodnik, Kuhu Tanvir, Kevin Flanagan, Amanda Awanjo, and Katie Bird. I can only hope that this dissertation—and the defense that you’re about to witness—exhibits even a fraction of your scholarly adeptness. Third, and most importantly, I want to acknowledge the help and support of my partner, Chahni Peeples. It’s only because of her encouragement and her intellect that I’ve been able to complete this project in its current form. Thank you, Chahni, for watching and discussing a million crazy music videos and art films with me. ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION At this point, music video has lived many different lives. Before the music video became a recognizable form, there were the Scopitone and Panoram movie jukeboxes, as well as short musical films commonly called soundies, in the 1940s and 1950s;1 additionally, promotional clips were distributed by artists and record labels to be exhibited in lieu of physical appearances in the 1960s and 1970s. Then, music video countdown shows became popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Video Concert Hall on USA and Showtime