The aesthetics of music video: an analysis of Madonna's ‘Cherish’

Abstract

When we become engaged with a music video, what draws us in? What constitutes craft or artistry in the genre? Theorists of music video have usually addressed these questions from the perspective of sociology, film theory or popular cultural studies. Film theory, in particular, has had a tremendous influence on the analysis of music video, because of the two genres' apparently similar structuring of sound and image. But by the criteria of film, music videos tend to come off as failed narratives; the genre's effectiveness eludes explanation.

El cuerpo audiovisualizado en la realización del vídeo musical contemporáneo

“…Se produce con ello una pérdida de su organicidad, lo que concluye en un permanente juego con la identidad de artistas, intérpretes y músicos, rasgo fundacional de la música popular industrial o mainstream (Guarinos, 2012). Como ya se ha descrito en anteriores publicaciones (Sedeño-Valdellós, 2012, Vernallis, 1998, el videoclip dirige su realización en esta dirección, abriendo su interpretación a lo político.…”

El contenido del videoclip dominante como reproductor cultural e ideológico

“…Gran parte de la bibliografía existente sobre el videoclip ha centrado el análisis de contenido en sus características formales (Vernallis, 1998(Vernallis, y 2004; Reiss, S. y Feineman, 2000; Sedeño, 2002 y 2015 y Viñuela Suárez, 2009), la perspectiva de género (Roberts, 1991;Seidman, 1992;Kalof, 1997; Zhang, Dixon y Conrad, 2010; Aubrey y Frisby, 2011; Wallis, 2011;Guarinos, 2012), la representación de determinadas minorías (Brown, 1990;Naficy, 1998;Wingood et al, 2003), una mezcla de los dos anteriores (Brown y Campbell, 1986;Rich et al, 1998;Bryant, 2008 (Durant et al, 1997, Gruber et al, 2005. Excepto algún apunte o esbozo, nada se ha dicho sobre el contenido ideológico del videoclip más comercial en relación al sistema capitalista de donde surge.…”

Dissolving the Other: Orientalism, Consumption, and Katy Perry’s InsatiableDark Horse

“…The camera follows the man into the room so that the eye is focused on his glimmering golden cape and headdress, as well as the muscular blue backs of Perry’s male servants. Typically, it is women who appear fragmented in music videos (Schoppmeier, 2015; Vernallis, 1998; Vernallis, 2008), with this fragmentation indicating their existence as sexual objects. In Dark Horse , this is reversed, as it is the men in the video who are sometimes reduced to close-ups of body parts, it is the men who will be on display, not the pop star.…”