Another piece of my secondary research included the evaluation of Andrew Goodwin’s, ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ this textbook analyses critics opinions on music videos and shows how diverse and conflicting some cultural critics opinions are of ‘what a music video is’. Showing the level of complexity created when defining a music video, as multiple views, opinions and possible definitions have already been given to this art form.
The critics opinions as identified within this book are as follows:
- Mercer believed that music videos are cinematic products and therefore are to be viewed as films within the media.
- Fry and Fry said that they are more like adverts, arguably dismissing or degrading them as an art form.
- Fiske commented that music videos were for TV as these post modern texts combine a range of technologies and arts such as dancing, singing and other technical elements.
- Walker described them as visual art, similar to that in a museum, due to the adventurous nature of the art forms.
- Lewis said that music videos belonged in shopping malls, thus disregarding them as a serious media art form, as they believed that music videos are “disposable” and not to be taken seriously.
- Finally Marcus commented that they are socially acceptable semiotic pornography, due to the arousing nature that some music videos uphold.
However it could be argued that any one, even all of these statements are true about a variety of music videos to some extend or another, as counter arguments could equally be given for each opinion. Meaning that it is clear to evaluate that defining music videos is a very difficult notion as even media critics can not agree on one definition. Although this could be seen to reflect the freedom and ample opportunity that is given to directors when composing and producing music videos as the limits are almost endless due to the aid of technology. And through such technological advances the costs are cheaper and the technology more accessible, meaning that music videos are taken more seriously in general as a media art form, the definition however is still quite a complex issue due to the growing range of genre’s and sub genre’s for music videos each with their own conventions and meanings within their videos.
This book also brought up a highly important purpose towards music videos, that being the ‘meta-narrative’ and ‘star persona’ which is closely linked to music videos and heavily exploited by celebrities and the ‘meta-narrative’ effect means that an artists career and progression can be seen visually through the accompanying music videos to their work, showing the audience the changes and making statements and updating their image on a global scale to increase their publicity on a regular basis. Similarly the ‘star persona’ factor depicts music artists as ‘stars’ within their music videos, enhancing their publicity again and creating them a public image to present to their consumers, and if done successfully or not this could boost, change or even lower their status within the media world, proving highly significant to celebrities as an easy set up into the lime light.
Finally the textbook has been shown to identify social implications of music videos, creating negative connotations of teenagers from the ‘MTV generation’ due to their apparent lack of attention due to music videos being so short, and significantly the obsession artists tend to have with image impacting upon teenagers to such extents that consequences such as anorexia and even plastic surgery at the age of 16 for girls has been seen as a way to improve a person image. This means music videos give a negative view on teenagers, despite the multiple sub genres each having different views on image and culture, meaning that music videos should not be fully to blame as arguably celebrity idols should become more conscious of the effects their image is having upon teenagers in the more extreme examples mentioned above.
Overall Andrew Goodwin’s ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ does give an analytical insight into critics views of music videos and the social implications of such videos on teenagers, meaning as a secondary resource for research into music videos this text is helpful in providing contrasting opinions and showing the complexity in an otherwise often dismissed art from. However the text book is written for degree level students and above studying media, meaning when evaluating the effectiveness of this text as a form of research shows that there is a disadvantage as the higher level terminology and overall layout of the text makes it at times difficult to follow, meaning it is arguably less useful than other secondary resources which will be mentioned in future posts.
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