Media Magazine - article on 'Analysing music videos - It goes like this'
What I learnt from this article:
Some may criticise music videos, specifically making the argument that modern day music videos are simply exaggerated advertisement of songs and artists. David Stubbs explains the music videos have turned into a, basically, very expensive advertisement and presentation of international corporations.From this article, I gathered that some make the criticism that music videos from the bigger artists have become lazy and do not stimulate the audience any more, despite their phenomenal budget. I agree with this point of view, however, I do believe that modern day music videos, even from bigger artists, are becoming much more creative and symbolic in their creation.
For example, Taylor Swift's first well known music video is 'Love story' which has a very basic, lovey-dovey narrative that is boring to watch and follows Todorov's very predictable narrative theory. But, her most recent iconic video 'Bad Blood' has a lot more creativity applied to it. It consists of highly feminist ideologies being presented and can be considered to be very empowering. This shows how although music videos are often simply a big advertisement, they can often have very empowering and powerful connotations, and can reflect our society in a creative fashion. The latter steers clearly away from en masse product placement and company promotion, as does the video for 'love story'. The reason for this could be because, at the time of 'Love Story', Swift was a fairly new artist on the block, and therefore would not have recieved many offers or advertisement or product placement. However, there is no reason for her in 2015, being one of the biggest artists in the music industry, to not follow in the footsteps of the similarly successful artists in the industry and include product placement, as a prominent feature of her music videos. Yet, some may propose the argument that Swift's use of an array of other celebrities in her later video is an advertisement in itself. This is because fans of those celebrities will create more hype and buzz for the video and thus generate more profit. Essential a subtle money-making scheme for all celebrities involved.
But this raises a very important question in the music and music video industry; is this really such a bad thing?
Some may criticise music videos, specifically making the argument that modern day music videos are simply exaggerated advertisement of songs and artists. David Stubbs explains the music videos have turned into a, basically, very expensive advertisement and presentation of international corporations.From this article, I gathered that some make the criticism that music videos from the bigger artists have become lazy and do not stimulate the audience any more, despite their phenomenal budget. I agree with this point of view, however, I do believe that modern day music videos, even from bigger artists, are becoming much more creative and symbolic in their creation.
For example, Taylor Swift's first well known music video is 'Love story' which has a very basic, lovey-dovey narrative that is boring to watch and follows Todorov's very predictable narrative theory. But, her most recent iconic video 'Bad Blood' has a lot more creativity applied to it. It consists of highly feminist ideologies being presented and can be considered to be very empowering. This shows how although music videos are often simply a big advertisement, they can often have very empowering and powerful connotations, and can reflect our society in a creative fashion. The latter steers clearly away from en masse product placement and company promotion, as does the video for 'love story'. The reason for this could be because, at the time of 'Love Story', Swift was a fairly new artist on the block, and therefore would not have recieved many offers or advertisement or product placement. However, there is no reason for her in 2015, being one of the biggest artists in the music industry, to not follow in the footsteps of the similarly successful artists in the industry and include product placement, as a prominent feature of her music videos. Yet, some may propose the argument that Swift's use of an array of other celebrities in her later video is an advertisement in itself. This is because fans of those celebrities will create more hype and buzz for the video and thus generate more profit. Essential a subtle money-making scheme for all celebrities involved.
But this raises a very important question in the music and music video industry; is this really such a bad thing?
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