The Music Videos Movement: Beyond Simple Entertainment by Andrea Cincotti1
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Musica Stampata – Issue 1 (February 2021) The Music Videos Movement: Beyond Simple Entertainment by Andrea Cincotti1 Abstract The music video is not just a way to entertain the audience, it is a mode of expression that encourages, inspires, and motivates. Music video is the proof of how a media product can represent society, stirring up people’s consciousness and addressing crucial topics. Through the analysis of a diverse array of music videos and the application of media theories, the article will demonstrate how music video can play an active role in social movements and ignite social change, becoming a way of identification. The music video represents one of the innovations that produced major changes in the music-related industry.2 Music videos began to be recognized by the public following the launch of MTV in 1981. However, music video has never been an exclusively television phenomenon; indeed, it existed even before MTV, and only later on began to be shown on many other media too. Associate Professor of Communications Mathias Bonde Korsgaard states that music video is not a televisual genre, but it existed before and will continue to exist beyond television. Therefore, music video should be considered as an independent medium that due to the multifaceted history and its heterogeneity, is difficult to define in a straightforward way.3 It is safe to say though that music video has become not only an integral part of the music industry, but also a powerful and meaningful form of media or, as Stanford Affiliate Researcher Carol Vernallis defines it, “a key driver of popular culture.”4 When approaching music video, we should not consider its history, genre, or visual style; rather we should accept its audiovisual and multimodal nature, trying to rethink our ways of conceptualizing it.5 Indeed, regardless of their genre and visual style, some music videos more than others can really represent a powerful medium to convey meaningful messages. Since “Music videos can push the boundaries and be pieces of pure creativity,”6 they require a strong audience engagement, which stirs up a dialogue within society, giving voice to minorities and creating a sense of belonging for less represented categories. In his work “MTV and the Politics of Postmodern Pop,” David Tetzlaff states that postmodern critics used to see in MTV a mirror-image of the ideal postmodern text, made up of fragmentation, 1 Andrea Cincotti (b. 1998) holds a B.A. in Communications and Creative Writing from John Cabot University (Rome, Italy). 2 Will Straw, “Music Video in Its Contexts: Popular Music and Post-Modernism in the 1980s,” Popular Music 7, no. 3 (1988): 248. 3 Mathias Bonde Korsgaard, “Defining Music Video,” in Music Video after MTV : Audiovisual Studies, New Media, and Popular Music (Routledge, 2017), 16-17, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315617565. 4 Carol Vernallis, “YouTube Aesthetics,” in Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2013), 127, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199766994.001.0001. 5 Korsgaard, “Defining Music Video,” 35. 6 PULSE, “Why Music Videos Are Still So Important: Views from inside the Industry,” Medium, February 4, 2016, https://medium.com/@pulsefilms/why-music-videos-are-still-so-important-views-from-inside-the-industry- ebaa7d4758d2. 2 segmentation and the collapse of past and future into the present.7 But music videos are more than just an example of fragmentation or collapse. For instance, Lady Gaga’s nine-minute “Telephone” music video demonstrates how a music video can hide a deeper meaning behind what could seem a common pop song about a breakup. Lady Gaga told E! News that she wanted to convey “the idea that America is full of young people that are inundated with information and technology and turn it into something that was more of a commentary on the kind of country that we are.”8 Some poststructuralist exponents were interested in the search of an interpretative attitude through which to challenge – and subvert fixed categories. Their concerns were primarily felt by people who did not fit the ordered and predetermined categories and did not accept the conception of the world as binaries, as conceived by the previous movement of structuralism. Considering the objective of poststructuralism, it is possible to understand the music video as a product of the poststructuralist attitude. Deconstructing the superficial meaning of some music videos, it is possible to discover a further and even deeper message that can ignite a sort of social action. Going back to Gaga’s “Telephone,” the prison where Gaga is locked up represents the overflow of information, an ideal cage that the overflow of information and technology create. When one of the guards comments “I told you, she didn’t have a dick” after stripping Gaga of her clothes, the artist’s sexuality is exposed as well as the society’s tendency to speculate about her sexual identity. Gender stereotypes and sexism are addressed throughout the video as well. Indeed, the meaning behind some music videos is not fixed. Music video, as all media products, can be considered as a system of signs. As the Italian philosopher and semiotician Umberto Eco wrote, for every system of signs, signs and their correlations are to be seen in relation to a sender and an addressee. Eco also added that the reception of the message is different and may vary among individuals since a message can have different levels of meaning.9 Eco’s theory on the meaning of the message foreruns poststructuralist ideas. According to the poststructuralist framework, a text is never a self-contained object that can be fully explained by anyone, but rather something that begins to be produced in the moment in which it is read and interpreted. Following this perspective, the meaning of a text does not depend on the author’s intention, but it can have infinite meanings based on the readers’ reception and interpretation of it. The poststructuralist thinker Roland Barthes seems to support this idea in his essay “The Death of the Author,” in which he states that to associate the text with the author means to impose a limit and a fixed meaning to it and, therefore, to put a full stop to the act of writing. Historically, the figure of the author has been compared many times to a father- son relationship because the author is believed to exist prior to his works. Yet, the author is just an artificial figure and, identifying him with his works, imposes a fixed meaning on the texts that should not exist according to poststructuralist thinkers. Therefore, Barthes states that the author needs to die in order for the reader to be born.10 The theory can be applied to analyze media products as well, yet a question arises concerning music videos: who is the real author of a music video? Is it the singer who wrote the lyrics to the song? Is it the director of the music video? Or is it the recording company who commissioned the video? 7 Andrew Goodwin, “Fatal Distractions: MTV Meets Postmodern Theory,” in Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader, ed. Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin, and Lawrence Grossberg (Psychology Press, 1993), 37. 8 Courtney Crowder, “Lady Gaga’s New Video Explained: Dead Diners, Americana and Cigarette Sunglasses,” ABC News, March 16, 2010, https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/SpringConcert/decoding-lady-gagas-telephone- video/story?id=10114081. 9 Prayer Elmo Raj, “Text and Meaning in Umberto Eco’s The Open Work,” The Context 2, no. 3 (2015): 329. 10 Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image Music Text, ed. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 142–48. 3 If we think about it, what is depicted in the music video does not always have to do with the words sang by the singer. For instance, even though Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” deals with a repentant boy who tries to make up with the person he loves for some mistakes he’s done, the music video stars the group of dancers “Royal Family” moving to the rhythm of the song. In “Steal My Girl,” One Direction sing about a unique relationship with a girl so perfect that everybody wants to “steal” her. Yet, the music video shows the actor Danny DeVito trying to set up a video in the desert featuring a chimpanzee, sumo wrestlers, acrobats, a marching band, and the Maasai tribe from Tanzania. These are two of the many cases in which it is hard to say that the author of the song is the real author of the music video. Certainly, the author of the song plays a role in the realization of the music video as well: if the director decides to stick to the concept, story, or simply to the mood of the song, the lyrics and music may serve as an input or pattern to follow in the production of the video. So, is the director of the video the real author of the video itself? In order for the audience to extract a meaning out of a work and create a real knowledge, different from just the capitalist values of commodification, meaning does not have to be universal, but fragmented and open to interpretation. Other times, the message behind music videos is explicit enough and does not contain further hidden meanings. For instance, the very visual and discussed Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video faces powerful topics such as the abuse of guns and violence in America and the discrimination and violence that the Black community undergoes in the States. Madonna’s eight- minute “God Control” music video is commendable for the innovative way it deals with the serious issue of gun control.