Measuring up Music Videos

One region of the media landscape I've never made any headway with whatsoever is popular music. The only time I ever tried to keep up was back in college, when I'd watch the VH1 Top 20 countdowns while I did my laundry. I developed a fondness for the music videos even if I often found the music inexplicable. I never made much of an effort to really explore the medium, but last night I stumbled across a TIME magazine list of the best music videos of the last 30 years. I had a great time getting acquainted with videos like Fatboy Slim's "Praise You," and Talking Heads' "Once in Lifetime," which was recently heard in the first "Wreck-it-Ralph" trailer. I've never needed any convincing that music videos were an art form, and some of my favorite directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry have done some of their best work in videos.

However, when I sat down to write about music videos for this blog, I found myself facing a basic question. Are music videos a form of film or television? How should they be categorized? Well, the modern music video as we know it gained popularity with the rise of MTV in the early 1980s. There's a reason why the TIME list only goes back thirty years. However, music videos also have many film antecedents, going back all the way to the beginnings of the sound era. "Song film" shorts were popular once the sound era came around, and much of the structure and style of music videos came straight from early film musicals like the Beatles' "Hard Day's Night." There were also promotional clips and "inserts" consisting of filmed segments for specific songs that the record companies made in the 60s and 70s, some for film and some for television. You could argue that music videos have mostly been watched on television and have made their most significant advances in that format. However, it's quickly becoming the case that most music videos are watched on the internet, which also happens to remove some of the length and content restrictions of television. The record companies embraced the internet far more quickly than the studios once they became aware that they could reach a much larger potential audience online. I wonder if the transition might result in a further evolution in the music video form.

Maybe music videos should be in their own category, unconnected to any particular media platform, like video art installations or virtual theme park rides. The television and film establishments haven't been very good about recognizing the form. Aside from the MTV Video Music Awards, few major media institutions recognize the merits of the music video. You'll find no category for them at the Oscars or the Emmys. Music videos have slowly started receiving more attention from film historians in recent years, since several major directors have gotten their start in videos. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was inducted into the Library of Congress's National Film Archive back in 2009, the first music video to receive that honor. The New York Museum of Modern Art added two Mark Romanek videos, Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" and Madonna's "Bedtime Story," to their permanent collection. Also, I found the "The Beastie Boys Video Anthology" occupying a spot in the Criterion Collection, officially spine #100.

There's no denying that music videos should be considered a form of advertising, and there's still some disagreement in the music industry as to whether they should be primarily treated as advertisements for the bands they feature, or whether they qualify as content. Music videos clearly still have a major marketing effect on specific songs, like PSY's "Gangnam Style," for instance. In many cases this has a negative effect on the videos since their function as advertisement can often mean content that skews very commercial. On the other hand, music videos are also far more likely to feature experimental filmmaking techniques and unique stylistic conceits that wouldn't be acceptable in mainstream feature films. A recent trend has been interactivity, in videos like Arcade Fire's "Wilderness Downtown," that can be customized. They also follow a different set of content rules, with major artists like Madonna and Lady Gaga cultivating reputations for controversial music videos with boundary-pushing content.

I don't think it's possible to categorize music videos as solely a product of film or television, or the internet, which is why I ended up using the tags for all of them. It's nice to think of them as a meeting point of all three, though I think if I had to pick one it would be the short film. Shorts were always more experimental, more free-form, and more open to new ideas. Music videos fit those criteria perfectly. Moreover, they're really the only short form media that still have any impact on the popular culture anymore.
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