MUSIC VIDEO THEORY #2: Carol Vernallis

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• The referring to an artist's back catalogue, can't put actual clips but want to do it through having some similar characters, like Bowie did in his videos for The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell + Love Is Lost 

Click here to get to her website.

She is of the extreme view that music videos don't have a narrative.

Evaluation of her book:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0196859904273116?journalCode=jcia

Music Video's Second Aesthetic:

How different is a Lady Gaga video from one by A Flock of Seagulls? MTV’s first broadcast was thirty years ago. Music video has since undergone shifts in technologies, platforms, periods of intense cross-pollination with other media, financial booms and busts, and changing levels of audience engagement. While music videos hit a low point in the 00s as budgets dried up, they have reemerged as a key driver of popular culture.1 Music video’s moment of resurgence resembles MTV’s first moment: there seems to be a question of what music video can do and where it fits.
What does it mean to look back on this thirty-year history? A comparison of the beginnings and the present might show vast differences in performance style, formal conceits, editing, depictions of space, the showcasing of new technologies—or it might not. Might we track the changes from 1979 to 2012? Should we follow the arrivals of new technologies or the migrations to new venues and platforms—from low-res video production in the eighties, to high- gloss 35 millimeter in the nineties, to flexible digital technologies in the 2000’s; from BET, MTV and late-night TV to YouTube, Vimeo and Vevo? We might instead follow the cycles of maturation (in genres like rap and metal), or auteurs’ interests and influence and the ways

...

What is a music video? At one time we knew, but no longer; part of the change has to do with media contexts. In the eighties and nineties, music videos were primarily seen on a few satellite services—like MTV, BET or VHI—or within a countdown on broadcast television late at night, and it was difficult for record companies to get their clips on the air. To make the MTV rotation, clips would first be vetted by a board of ten, and then have to clear the Standards and Practices division. Consciously or unconsciously, directors and artists tailored their work for these committees. Standards and Practices was an especially difficult hurdle, seemingly wielding as much power as the Hays Office in the 50s. Directors and musicians could never predict which constraints would be enforced. For example, no alcohol or product placement was supposed to appear on MTV (unless you were Guns N’ Roses). Some forms of smooching and T&A were okay, others not. Most submissions to the station never aired, and what did possessed a high degree of uniformity, probably resulting from the cat-and-mouse games between censors and directors. Today music video clips are dispersed across a number of commercial websites (Vevo, Hulu, Launch, MTV, Pitchfork), as well as YouTube. There is little vetting of clips. Except for concerns about copyright violations (a constant struggle), prosumers feel free to upload a range of material that confounds genres. For example, many clips with full-frontal nudity remain up even though YouTube viewers can flag them.
We used to define music video as a product of the record company in which images are put to a recorded pop song in order to sell the song. None of this definition holds any more. 

The impact of convergence due to YouTube, one of Web 2.0's most prominent inventions.

On YouTube, individuals as much as record companies post music video clips, and many prosumers have no hope of selling anything. The image can be taken from a variety of sources and a song recorded afterwards: a clip might look like a music video, but the music might be neither prior nor preeminent. In addition, the song might not be a pop song but something similar (ambient, electronic) or very different (jazz or opera). Clips can range from ten seconds to several hours; no longer is there a predictable four-to five-minute format. All sorts of interruption can occur (an insertion of a trailer clip or someone talking), and material from other genres may infiltrate (commercials, sportscasts). Music videos appear in new and unexpected media, interactive games and iPhone apps. A dizzying array of user-based content ranges from vidding and remixes to mashups. It still makes sense to call all these music videos. 

She also brings forward the theory of intertextuality:

Music video has always been self-reflexive, as well as intertextual with nearby forms and genres; think, of course, of the Buggles’ “Music Video Killed the Radio Star,” the video that inaugurated music video’s first broadcast in 1979, and, as the song title suggests, staked its claim against

other media. 

EXAMPLES SHE LISTS:

"Her favourites"
Paula Abdul’s “Rush Rush“ which pays homage to Rebel Without a Cause, 
the Blues Travelers’ “Runaround“ which reenacts The Wizard of Oz. 

As an artist's career gets longer they might refer to their old videos. This can also be done without using former clips, a less direct and evident reference 

But videos today want to say “music video is back!“ and there are many ways it does so. Musicians can place clips of their earlier videos in their clips in a recent one, as if to say “I’m still around.“ “Know your music video history!“ suggests Britney Spears’s “Hold It Against Me“ and Eminem’s and Dr. Dre’s “I Need a Doctor.“ 

The Dancing In The Street video is an archetype for all dance videos, for some audiences it is a simulacrum.

Another way is to intersperse references to other videos, as in Hanson’s 2011 “Thinking Bout Somethin’.“64 The clip plays with speed—characters move a bit too fast or slow, which makes the clip seem very up-to-date, but it’s also filled with a thousand references for those in the know—to Blues Brothers films, West Side Story, Spike Jonze’s and Weezer’s music video “Buddy Holly“ (an homage to the television show Happy Days), a Gap commercial, and every other “dancin’ in the street“ video like the already nostalgic LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem“ and Lionel Ritchie’s “All Night Long.“ It seems jokingly to say, “Hanson was always retro, remember when they did “Mmmbop?“ but we’ll really test your knowledge of retro.“ Many other examples include Katy Perry’s “Friday Night,“ which contains cameos by eighties music video stars Kenny G and Debbie Gibson, and recent YouTube viral web star Karen Black. And Weezer’s “Pork and Beans“ video is a mashup of YouTube one-hit wonders.