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Music videos have played an important role in both the development
and the promotion of music. Students could analyze different features
of music videos (for on-line viewing)in terms of (Shuker, 1994,
p. 186):
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mood: the overall feeling of nostalgia, romanticism,
despair, etc.
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narrative structure: degree to which contains a story
versus a non-linear montage
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realism versus fantasy
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themes: loss of innocence, love, protest, etc.
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performance defined in terms of genre features
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portrayal of sexuality/gender role stereotyping
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focus on promotion of singer
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music content
Music video producers
mtv.com
vh1.com
channelv.com
[Channel V: Asia Pacific]
columbiarecords.com
Music video clips
clipland.com
fuse.tv
launch
music videos on Yahoo
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Another important element of music videos are the intertextual
links made to a range of different images and texts that
convey the meaning of the video. John Fiske studied adolescents’
responses to Madonna by “listening to them, reading
the letters they write to fanzines, or observing their behavior
at home or in public. The fans’ words or behavior
are . . . texts that need ‘reading’ theoretically
in just the same way as the ‘texts of Madonna’
do (97). In reading these various “texts of Madonna”
— the music videos, movies, magazine articles, posters,
etc., Fiske goes beyond what I have described as a textual
approach to recognize “that the signifieds exist not
in the text itself, but extratextually, in the myths, countermyths,
and ideology of their culture” (97). This allows him
to determine “the way the dominate ideology is structured
into the text and into the reading subject, and those textual
features that enable negotiated, resisting, or oppositional
readings to be made” (98). |
He cites the example of 14-year-old Lucy’s
response to a Madonna poster: She’s tarty and seductive
. . . but it looks alright when she does it, you know, what
I mean, if anyone else did it it would look right tarty,
a right tart you know, but with her its OK, it’s acceptable.
. . . with anyone else it would be absolutely outrageous,
it sounds silly, but it’s OK with her, you know what
I mean. (November, 1985)(98). |
For Fiske, this response represents Lucy’s grappling
with the cultural oppositions of patriarchal versus feminist
perspectives on sexuality: |
Lucy can only find patriarchal words to
describe Madonna’s sexuality — “tarty”
and “seductive” — but she struggles against
the patriarchy inscribed in them. At the same time, she
struggles against the patriarchy inscribed in her own subjectivity.
The opposition between “acceptable” and “absolutely
outrageous” not only refers to representations of
female sexuality, but is an externalization of the tension
felt by adolescent girls when trying to come to terms with
the contradictions between a positive feminine view of their
sexuality and the alien patriarchal one that appears to
be the only one offered by the available linguistic and
symbolic systems (98). |
Through her grappling with the conflicting codes of the
poster, Lucy is defining her gender identity within the
context of competing patriarchal and feminist values. She
also make intertextual links according to learned cultural
categories (Orr). Fiske cites the example of the cultural
category of “the blond”: |
Madonna’s music video Material Girl
provides us with a case in point: it is a parody of Marilyn
Monroe’s song and dance number “Diamonds are
a Girl’s Best Friend” in the movie Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes: such an allusion to a specific text
is an example of intertextuality for its effectiveness depends
upon specific, not generalized, textual knowledge —
a knowledge that, incidentally, many of Madonna’s
young girl fans in 1985 were unlikely to possess. The video’s
intertextuality refers rather to our culture’s image
bank of the sexy blonde star and how she plays with men’s
desire for her and turns it to her advantage (108). |
Readers therefore associate certain cultural meanings
with categories such as “the blonde” —
sexiness, power, vulnerability, youth, celebrity, etc.,
meanings, in this case, associated with the cultural practice
of defining gender roles. Through a range of different “textual
shifters” ’ record labels, movies, music videos,
celebrity magazines, etc., Madonna evokes the contradictory
images of “innocent virgin” and “culturely
whore.” For many adolescent females, during her popularity,
Madonna represents an assertiveness against a patriarchal
system — an attitude that “I can do what I want,”
an autonomy not always associated with a 1950s image of
“the blonde” as dependent on patriarchy. |
There has also been considerable debate about the content
of music videos and the effects of that content on adolescent
viewers. In his documentary, “Dreamworlds
II,” Sut Jhally argues that women are
represented primarily as sex objects within an adolescent
male fantasy world in which alluring women are portrayed
as willing and eager to have sex with men. He argues that
these portrayals are related to male violence towards women
and to patriarchic notions of sexuality. |
As noted on the web site description, he argues the following
points: |
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Women in music television inhabit a fantasy landscape,
a “DreamWorld” where the norms of femininity
are nymphomania and dependence on and subservience to
men. In this DreamWorld, women vastly outnumber men, attraction
is instant, and sex happens without courtship. All men
are promised sexual gratification, including the viewer.
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This dream world is inextricably tied up in the fantasy
life of adolescent heterosexual males. The adolescent
heterosexual male fantasies of seeing women in their underwear,
looking down women’s shirts or up their skirts,
and engaging in casual and erotic touch with multiple
women are played out ad nauseum in plotlines and camerawork.
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These sorts of stories about women’s sexuality,
while undeniably successful from a marketing perspective,
have consequences in the real world. They encourage men
to think of women primarily as sexual objects without
subjectivity and encourage women to value themselves only
if they can attract the gaze or advances of men. Just
as in adolescent heterosexual male fantasy, emotions and
humanity take a back seat to a mechanical, exploitative
orgy
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Another Education Media Foundation video,
What a Girl Wants examines the lyrics of Christina
Aguilera’s song “What
a Girls Wants” in relationship to adolescent
females self-perceptions of themselves as females.
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Media Awareness Lesson: Popular
Music and Music Videos |
Media Awareness Lesson: Public
Images |
Music
Video 101 [create music videos] |
Webquest: The
Producer [ create a music video based on a poem ]
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For further reading:
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Feineman, N, & Reiss, S. (2000). Thirty
frames per second: The visionary art of the music video. New
York: Harry N. Abrams.
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Gaskell, R. (2004). Make your own music video.
New York: CMP Books.
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Vernallis, C. (2004). Experiencing music video:
Aesthetics and cultural context. New York: Columbia University
Press. | | |
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