Placing Music Video: A new audiovisual modality
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Keywords:
music, space, culture, video
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Abstract
Music, as Jacques Attali emphasises, “is a way of perceiving the world” (1985:4). Sarah Cohen also suggests that: “Individuals can use music as a cultural ‘map of meaning’, drawing upon it to locate themselves in different imaginary geographies… and to articulate both individual and collective identities” (1998: 286-287). Tia DeNora extends on this, pointing out that: “Music can be used as a device for the reflexive process of remembering/constructing who one is, a technology for spinning the apparently continuous tale of who one is” (DeNora 2000: 63). Music has served various integral social and cultural functions in human societies throughout history. It seems clear that as music has changed shape and form through the advent of various reproduction technologies, the ways in which we consume as well as produce music, and the shape and form of music-as-cultural map and music as way of perceiving the world, have also changed over time.
In his book The Sight of Sound, Richard Leppert points out: “Precisely because musical sound is abstract, intangible, and ethereal – lost as soon as it is gained – the visual experience of its production is crucial… for locating and communicating the place of music and musical sound within society and culture” (1993: xx-xxi). This paper will focus on what Michel Chion describes as “a very influential new audiovisual form, the music video, which has opened the doors to infinite possibilities in representing relations between a voice and its source” (1999: 172). The paper argues that the contemporary articulation of music and images, built on “infinite possibilities in representing relations between a voice and its source”, has come to shape a persuasive new audiovisual modality for “locating and communicating the place of music and musical sound within society and culture”. In order to examine this new audiovisual modality, I will move away from a conventional approach based upon looking at music video in terms of its non-narrative structure, and instead propose a conceptual approach based on looking at music video in terms of its production of space. This line of discussion will be navigated not by providing close textual readings of various music videos, but rather by examining and theorising the music video as cultural/media form.
In his book The Sight of Sound, Richard Leppert points out: “Precisely because musical sound is abstract, intangible, and ethereal – lost as soon as it is gained – the visual experience of its production is crucial… for locating and communicating the place of music and musical sound within society and culture” (1993: xx-xxi). This paper will focus on what Michel Chion describes as “a very influential new audiovisual form, the music video, which has opened the doors to infinite possibilities in representing relations between a voice and its source” (1999: 172). The paper argues that the contemporary articulation of music and images, built on “infinite possibilities in representing relations between a voice and its source”, has come to shape a persuasive new audiovisual modality for “locating and communicating the place of music and musical sound within society and culture”. In order to examine this new audiovisual modality, I will move away from a conventional approach based upon looking at music video in terms of its non-narrative structure, and instead propose a conceptual approach based on looking at music video in terms of its production of space. This line of discussion will be navigated not by providing close textual readings of various music videos, but rather by examining and theorising the music video as cultural/media form.
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References
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Vernallis, C. (2007) 'Strange People, Weird Objects: The Nature of Narrativity, Character, and Editing in Music Videos', in Beebe and Middleton, (eds) Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 111-151. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390206-006
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Žižek, S. (2005) 'Re-visioning 'Lacanian' Social Criticism', in Butler, R. & Stephens, S. (eds.) Interrogating the Real, London and New York: Continuum.
Attali, J. (1999) Noise: The Political Economy of Music, translated by Brian Massumi, with Foreword by Fredric Jameson and Afterword by Susan McClary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Austerlitz, S. (2007) Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes, New York and London: Continuum. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501330636
Beebe, R. (2007) 'Paradoxes of Pastiche: Spike Jonze, Hype Williams, and the Race of the Postmodern Auteur', in Beebe, R. and Middleton, J. (eds) Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 303-327. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390206-014
Brown, R. S. (1994) Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd Edition, Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Chanan, M. (1995) Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music, London: Verso.
Chion, M. (1994) Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, translated by Claudia Gorbman, New York: Columbia University Press.
Chion, M. (1999) The Voice in Cinema, translated by Claudia Gorbman, New York: Columbia University Press.
Cohen, S. (1993) 'Ethnography and Popular Music Studies', Popular Music 12 (2), 123-138. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000005511
Cohen, S. (1998) 'Sounding out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place', in The Place of Music, edited by Andrew Leyshon, David Matless, and George Revill, London: The Guildford Press.
Connell, J. and Gibson, C. (2003) Sound Tracks: Popular music, identity and place, London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203448397
Corbett, J. (1994) Extended Play: Sounding Off From John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
De Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven F. Rendall, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Deleuze, G. (1986) Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, translated by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
DeNora, T. (2000) Music in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489433
Dickinson, K. (2007) 'Music Video and Synaesthetic Possibility', in Beebe and Middleton, 13-29. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390206-002
Flaxman, G. (ed.) (2000) The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Frith, S. Goodwin, A. and Grossberg, L. (eds). (1993) Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader, London: Routledge.
Goodwin, A. (1992) Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Grossberg, L. (1993) 'The Media Economy of Rock Culture: Cinema, Post-Modernity and Authenticity', in Frith, Goodwin, and Grossberg, 185-209.
Gunning, T. (1990) 'The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator, and the Avant-Garde', in Elsaesser, T. and A. Barker (eds.) Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, London: BFI, 1990.
Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T.W. (1973) Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming, New York: Continuum.
Jarvis, S. (1998) Adorno: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kaplan, E. A. (1987) Rocking around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture, Oxford: Blackwell.
Katz, M. (2004) Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford: Blackwell.
Leppert, R. (1993) The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Lewis, L. (1990) Gender Politics and MTV, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Merrifield, A. (2006) Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction, New York and London: Routledge.
Mulvey, L. (1975) 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', Screen, 16, 3, Autumn.
Pierson, M. (2002) Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder, New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/pier12562
Poster, Mark, 2006, Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines, Durham and London: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822388470
Pratt, R. (1990) Rhythm and Resistance: Explorations in the Political Use of Popular Music, New York: Praeger.
Rodowick, D.N. (1997) Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine, Durham and New York: Duke University Press.
Sterne, J. (1997) 'Sounds Like the Mall of America', Ethnomusicology, 41, 22-50. https://doi.org/10.2307/852577
Street, J. (1997) Politics and Popular Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Thompson, J.B. (2003) 'The Globalization of Communication', in Held, D. and A. McGrew (eds). The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate, Second Edition, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Thornton, S. (1996) Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Vernallis, C. (2004) Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context, New York: Columbia University Press.
Vernallis, C. (2007) 'Strange People, Weird Objects: The Nature of Narrativity, Character, and Editing in Music Videos', in Beebe and Middleton, (eds) Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 111-151. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390206-006
Žižek, S. (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology, London and New York: Verso.
Žižek, S. (1996) 'Lacan in Slovenia', interview with Renata Salecl, in Osborne, P. (ed.) A Critical Sense: Interviews with Intellectuals, London: Routledge, 21-35.
Žižek, S. (2005) 'Re-visioning 'Lacanian' Social Criticism', in Butler, R. & Stephens, S. (eds.) Interrogating the Real, London and New York: Continuum.