“Music videos are simply a tool for promoting an artist”. With reference to two music videos, how far do you agree with this statement?
The main purposes of music videos are
to sell the song and invoke a reaction so it leaves the viewer thinking about
the song, to give the listener a greater understanding of the song if the video
is narrative, to entertain the audience i.e. show off any other talents the
artist may have, and ultimately marketing the song/artist for the purposes of
exposure and expansion of the artist’s profile. Despite all of these being
factors being important, some people argue that some music videos are not
solely for promotion, but in fact are an art form in which the director can be
completely experimental. There are three types of music videos; performance,
narrative and concept based. Performance based videos are ones in which the
artist is features performing the song through most, if not all of the video.
Narrative based videos contain mostly footage that attempts to tell a story
through the moving image. This usually involves actors, and the storyline is
sometimes linked to the lyrical content of the song. Lastly, concept based
video is a style of music video which is based around a concept or idea. These
types of videos tend to be fairly unusual or utilise a particular editing or
filming technique.
The video complies with all of
the seven representations of women created by Goffman, Jhally and Kilbourne;
artificial look of the women, i.e. slim, tall, long-legged, tanned etc.;
dismemberment such as the camera focusing on the lips of the women;
commodification i.e. the women being presented as objects rather than other
humans; the feminine touch where the women are seen to caress their bodies;
relative size – women are always pictured to be shorter than men, showing male
dominance; function ranking i.e. men act, women help men act; and lastly,
ritualization of subordination where women are seen to be on the floor or
considerably lower than the males and where women are often shown to have some
childlike qualities. All of these representations appear in this music video,
dehumanizing and objectifying these women.
Making the women play a more subdued
role however, works in favour of the males as it draws attention to the
completely different characters of the men and women. This is an act for
promotion as the target audience of teenagers can watch the video, consume it
and enjoy it; males are able to lust over the dancers in the video, and females
are able to consume the artists who all have equal screen time in comparison to
when the dancers are shown. This technique can be seen in other commercial
music videos such as Toxic – Britney Spears and She Wolf – Shakira.
In recent years, there has been an
influx of music videos that reimagine the preconceived concepts of marrying
moving image and music to create a piece of art rather than a stereotypical
music video. Somebody That I Used To Know – Gotye ft. Kimbra (directed by
Natasha Pincus) is a music video, which is considered to be artier, and
challenges conventional popular music videos as it is performance based, but
also partly concept based due to the fact that it focuses on paint and humans as
part of art. There are some similarities to typical music videos, such as the
first person mode of address where the artist mainly addresses the camera to
capture the audience, and editing techniques such as a cutting rate suited to
the tempo of the song. The video however focuses on expression; when Gotye
sings, his face is full of expression, which would not necessarily be a huge
feature in a commercial music video. This expression of emotions amplifies the
passion in both the lyrics and his singing voice.
This video has many connotations used
to create meanings, such as the way the drawing is filled in with paint during
the performance could represent the scale of the artist’s heartbreak. The way
that these connotations are constructed reinforces the ideas that Barthes
(1957) created in his writing of Mythologies. He said that in media texts, five
codes are created to be interpreted by the active audience. The codes that are
present in this music video are enigma codes (why are Gotye and Kimbra being painted
to be camouflaged by the background?), symbolic codes (what the paint
represents) and semic codes (connotations i.e. the paint). All of these aspects
are ways in which the audience can think about the codes being used and then
question them. When the audience questions the video, usually they want to
consume it again to fully understand the text. This is a promotional technique
used in most media texts as the audience will then purchase more of that
particular artist’s music.
However, even though this video
is more of an art form, the sole purpose is indeed to promote the artist and
song. The video and lyrics relate to heartbreak and dejection, both of which
the target audience should be able to relate to and therefore want to consume
more of the artist, which is also the one purpose of most commercial music
videos.
In conclusion, I believe that
all music videos are a tool for promoting an artist as the only reason for an
artist to create songs and videos is to get them heard. Even if the director of
a music video has very small intentions of promoting the video, Barthes codes
will be created almost unconsciously as different people will interpret the
video in different ways; therefore creating buzz about the text and promoting
it once again.
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