Key theorists in music video

The theories that I am going to cover are from:

1. Ervin Goffman
2. Laura Mulvey
3. Judith Butler

Ervin Goffman

One of the popular theories from Goffman was his concept of dramaturgy. This concept is the idea that life itself is a never ending story. You are born into a play, and then act accordingly to how other people act around you and tell you to behave according to what is known as every-day life, whilst everyone around you is also acting according to the same prospects.

"Goffman distinguished between front stages and back stages. During our everyday life, we spend most of our lives on the front stage, where we get to deliver our lines and perform. A wedding is a front stage. A classroom lectern is a front stage. A dinner table can be a front stage. Almost any place where we act in front of others is a front stage. Sometimes we are allowed to retreat to the back stages of life. In these private areas, we don’t have to act. We can be our real selves. We can also practice and prepare for our return to the front stage."

This is easily applicable to music video in that in a lot of music videos today we see that the actors and actresses within it are acting as though they are within there everyday life, or "backstage".

Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey
came up with the concept of the male gaze. This concept concerns how certain audiences (mostly men) will take pleasure in looking at woman being represented in a sexual way so as to attract the attention of this audience. The male gaze is what sells a most films today. One example of how this works, is that if a woman is on the screen, then the camera may stick with the curves of the woman, or she may be wearing tight or revealing clothing when it is not even intricate to the story line.

The theories of Laura Mulvey apply to almost every music video today. Most music videos that are sung by a female singer, has her presenting herself in a sexual way so as to attract a larger audience of men. And if the singer is a male, then they are likely to be surrounded by half naked women, so that men are more interested in the video, and there for more attracted to the music that coincides with it. One good example of the male gaze being in play within a music video is in the song International Love, by Pitbull and Chris Brown.

Judith Butler
Butler wrote an extremely influential book called Gender Trouble in 1990. In this book Butler refers to feminism and talks about how there approach is wrong. She says there approach was wrong because they were presuming woman to all have the same characteristics and interests. Butler referred to this approach as "an unwitting regulation and rectification of gender relations". She felt that this meant that feminism was dividing two clear groups, men and woman. Instead of opening up possibilities for a new gender.

Goodwin's lyric theory

Goodwin's lyric theory is the idea that music videos can fit into three different categories when looking at how the lyrics work with the video. Goodwin states these three categories as:

• Illustrate
• Contradict
• Amplify

When the visuals illustrate the lyrics, the characters in the music video seem to act out what the song is saying through the lyrics. When the visuals contradict the lyrics, the visuals are asynchronous and seem to have no relation. When the visuals amplify the lyrics, the visuals represent what is being said through the lyrics but in an exaggerated way.

I've made this video so you can see some examples of the three different categories:

Goodwin's theory of sub-genres in music videos

Goodwin's theory states that music videos demonstrate characteristics. This means that Music from different genres usually have corresponding styles of video.

Goodwin's sub-genres:

• Performance - where the artist or band performs music
• Narrative - a sort of mini-film, possibly telling the story of the song
• Cameo - where the band or artist appears but does not perform the song
• Dance routine - where the artist or band dances to the music

Heavy metal

The genre of music that is most commonly seen with the sub-genre of 'Performance' is Heavy rock. One example of this is in the music video for the song 'Smells like teen spirit' by Nirvana.

Boy/Girl band

In the song 'Beat again', by JLS (a boy band), the whole music video is a dance routine by the singers in the boy band. This music video conforms to what the audience would expect from a boy band. One boy band that rejects this stereotype is One direction.

In the song 'Steal my girl' by One direction, there is little performance, but most of it is narrative.

Hip-Hop

One good representation of Goodwin's theory is in the song 'Watch me', by Silento. In this music video for this Hip-hop song, there is only a dance routine and performance. This is the case with most Hip-Hop music videos.

Country

For most country music, as the songs are usually telling a story, the coinciding videos are of narrative form. One example of this is in the music video fro the song 'Wagon wheel', by Darius Rucker.






Another example of this is in the song 'People are crazy', by Billie Currington. The only difference between this music video and Wagon Wheel, is that in this song there is more performance and less narrative.










Pop
Pop music about 10 years ago would usually have an equal mix between performance and narrative, but now days it is almost completely narrative. One example of this is in the song 'We don't talk anymore', by Charlie Puth.

Timeline of music videos

Pop music evaluation

In My opinion, the music genre of ‘Vogue’ by ‘Madonna’, is pop. This is based off of not only the actual song itself, and the beat and tempo of it, but also the music video. The music video demonstrates Madonna as a pop idol in this video because of the way that she is sexualised for the inevitable male gaze that will take place with the video. This gives the watcher a clear understanding that this is a pop video because it is primarily with pop idols that they are displayed in this way within their music videos.

One of the many examples of this from other artists is Taylor swift in the song ‘shake it off’.

In the music video for shake it off, Taylor Swift (The lead singer), is displayed wearing revealing clothing in almost every single dance sequence. We can also see that she is surrounded by other woman wearing revealing clothing in this particular sequence. From this we can infer that most Pop songs, are made out to be Pop songs by music videos, and having the woman be sexualised for the purpose of the male gaze.

Another similarity that I see between ‘Vogue’ and other music videos is the use of exotic and unique sets.

This is evident in the music video vogue at all times. Because there are always things in the background that make it seem like they are on an actual set, or paintings to show that they are in an art gallery etc.…

If we compare this to the setting of a Rock music video, then we can clearly see that the settings are usually far more hectic, and a lot more generic. Like in ‘Avenged Sevenfolds’ music video for ‘God damn’.

Madonna Vogue evaluation

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