AS: Music Video Essay

Are music videos commercials, art, or porn?  Discuss.

Music videos are now a customary part of any track by an artist. A music video can be deemed to be one of three forms: a commercial -meaning that the video promotes the band to the audience. Porn – where the camera in the video focuses solely on females and objectifies them. And lastly, art – where a video can be deemed to tell a story.

Firstly, a video can be seen to be a commercial in a number of ways.  A music video can create a brand image through a music track in order to market the text.  One of the main ways a video can do this is through meta-narrative. This is where the video relates to the band’s life outside of the actual video, which then makes this recognisable to the audience and helps to identify the artist in a specific way.  Once this has been established, the video can go on to repeat random pieces of this narrative in the video, this is known as narrative fuzz, which then makes what the audience have seen before more memorable and means that they begin to associate certain images with a particular artist. Furthermore, music channels repeat artist’s music videos and have adverts integrated in them. The adverts the channels decide to screen in-between the videos correspond to the genre or nature of them, which shows the channels have targeted their niche audience and are able to advertise to them accordingly, reinforcing the way that music videos are becoming increasingly commercial. Lastly, another key feature of a music video that helps identify it as being a commercial is regular close ups of the band, these are known as ‘meat shots’ where the sole focus is on the artists in the video.  The artists are commonly given prevalence and a lot of screen time which leaves the audience with a lasting image of the artist.

Secondly, music videos could also be perceived to be porn rather than a commercial by an audience.  In modern music videos, women are often depicted in subordinate, male pleasing roles. This growing increase in this representation of women in modern culture reinforces sexism, according to a number of theorists, known as Goffman et Al. One of the most common features in music videos is where the camera focuses entirely on the women in the video using close-ups and midshots and here are a number of different representations that this can create of women in music videos. The artificial look refers to the way that women are shown to be slim, long legged, and narrow hipped, airbrushed and computer enhanced in order to deceive reality. Moreover, there is also dismemberment where specific parts of the women are displayed, detracting that they’re real people and instead actually objects for consumption. Along with this, women are also displayed as a commodification and therefore again seen to be an object for male pleasure and consumption; this again detracts from the fact that they’re people. The last feature that was identified by Goffman et Al was ritualization of subordination, where women are commonly seen to be submitting to a male in the video, usually on the floor – depicting that they’re lower in society, the kiss- where a woman is seen submitting to the male advance, woman as a child – often sitting on a man’s knee, or licensed withdrawal – where women are not actively participating in the social scene in the video.  

Lastly, there is the view that music videos are not commercials, or porn, but rather art. This argument focuses on the way that a music video can be thought provoking and used to tell a story, like a film. With the advancement of technology, music videos have progressively become more creative and imaginative to get to the highly innovative and modern stage they’re at today. An audience is now more immersed in a music video than ever before, the narrative is more powerful, and ‘videos are no longer perceived as a five minute promotion for a band’ a music video is able to communicate and captivate an audience, just like a piece of art does.  A theorist who strongly believed this was the case was Matt Hanson, who claimed “Music video is a perfectly formed moving image form, which is based on reinvention, reimagining and never standing still, always looking different and being in flux.” This reinforces the point that music videos have developed rapidly in recent times in order to get to their current stage where they are now more complex and thought provoking than ever before.  Also, the view that music videos are now more like films is backed by Hanson when he goes on to say “They offer up, in their flash cuts, glimpses of filmmaking futures”, he then uses the term “accelerated cinema” both of these quotations suggest that music videos represent the modern filmmaking techniques and features which means that they can be perceived as an art form.

To conclude, I believe that music videos can be deemed to be commercials. This is because it is clear that music videos have a central focus on the artist. The video is vital to the artist and is a prominent way in which the track is recognisable. It helps to give it a unique feel and helps the audience to associate a set of images with a band or artist. There are videos that have a main focus on females, meaning they could be seen as porn or videos with an extremely strong narrative that helps to tell a story – meaning they could be seen as an art form, but it is the features of a video that promote an artist that means that I believe they are predominantly commercials.