Music Video TheorysAlysia Hurrell

Andrew Goodwin’s theory

Key features of analysing music videos Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (pop, R&B, Indie etc.) There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are represented with images either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting. There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music. The record label would want a lot of close ups of the artist and artists may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style)There is frequently reference to notion of looking such as mirrors stages etc and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body. There are often intertextual reference to films, tv programmes and other music videos.

Roland Barthes Theory

Roland barthes was born n the 12th November 1915 and die at the age of 64. He was a french literary theorist, philospher, critic and semiotician (study of cultural signs and symbols). He expolored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools.

Roland barthes describes a text as: “a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritavely declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language...”

In other words text is like a tangled ball of threads, the thread needs to be unravelled, once unravelled, we encounter an absolute wide range of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle and create an entirely different meaning.

He said that texts may be ‘open’ or ‘closed’.

There are five codes that can be in any narrative: The Hermeneutic Code: (the voice of truth) Is the way the story

avoids telling the truth or revealling all the facts, in order to drop clues in through out to help create mystery.

The Enigma/ Proairetic Code: (empirical voice) The way the tension is built up and the audience is left guessing what happens next.

The Symbolic Code: (the voice of symbols) This is very similar to the semantic code, but acts at a wider level, organising semantic meanings into broader and deeper sets of meaning. This is typically done in the use of antithesis, where new meaning arises out of opposing and conflict ideas. (the voice of science) Looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology.

The Cultural Code: The Semantic Code: (the voice of the person) The semantic code

points to any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning by way of connotation which the story suggests.

Laura Mulvey’s theory

Laura Mulvey born August 15th 1941 is a British feminist film theorist. She is currently a professor of film and media studies at Birkbebk, University of London.

In 1975 she coined the term ‘Male Gaze’, she believes that in film and other forms of media audiences have to ‘view’ characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male.

The camera lingers on the curves of the female body , and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction t these events.

Gives women the status of objects.

There are criticisms to this theory that some women enjoy being ‘looked’ at. The gaze can also be directed toward members of the same gender, not at all of which are sexual, such as comparison of body image or in clothing.