Postmodern Intertextuality In Contemporary Music Video

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Selected Question: "In what ways does the text(s) you have chosen challenge the conventions of narrative filmmaking?"

Introduction

Music Video is imagined as youthful, disruptive, chaotic. Simultaneously heterogeneous and unified, frequently void of diegesis but also undivorced of cultural meaning. This essay will analyse contemporary Music Video’s use of visual intertextuality and pastiche in reference to Cinema and cinematic conventions. As an extension of this, this essay will be analysing Music Video in contrast to the antithetical established form: Cinema. Examining the contradictory notions of Music Videos propensity for hypertextual pastiche in conflict to its voracious status of zenith in the contemporary zeitgeist. For the purpose of this essay, narrative filmmaking as a goal will be best idealised as the ordered ‘Cinema’, whilst the chaotic form of ‘Music Video’ will largely remain the same, encompassing media captured from musical performance.

Music Video and Cinema: Genesis and Contemporary Distribution

Music video shan't be examined without the preface of its history- it is, by design, the medium of the disruptor and most importantly a medium of both the imitator and imitated. ‘In my view, it is necessary to analyse music videos, not only as a visual phenomenon or as a semiotic text, but also as a historical phenomenon.’ 1 (Johansson, 1992). It’s history still influences it today and thus allows it to challenge the conventions of Cinema.

MTV (music television) As a Platform for Music Video

MTV has been, arguably, the most formative force on Music Video. Launching in 1981, the Music Television channel provided a visual aspect to audio 24/7 with a mix of both live performance and pre-recorded Music Videos. MTV’s exclusive focus on popular culture, variety and almost permanent availability made it a television channel for the youth. As a result of the youthful audience, MTV was a uniquely experimental place for moving image. ‘I do not think it would be an exaggeration to call, for instance, music television (MTV), a youth channel’ 1 (Johansson, 1992).

Whilst not an inherently postmodern forum, the syntax of MTV was that of a golden age of cultural contrast, platforming a variety of artists. A bastion of the archetypal ‘teen’, it promulgated youth culture in its visual language and promoted and platformed converse, rebellious culture. It is important to note, however, that this ideology of rebellion stemmed from the identity of youth and an adolescent inquisition which proceeded it. ‘It is thus possible to trace the roots of MTV to the mid and late 1950s, i.e. to the rise of modern consumer society and the birth of the teenager.’ 1 (Johansson, 1992). Johannsson acknowledges that whilst MTV allowed the experimentation of the visual medium to take place, the existence of the teen allowed the audience for MTV to exist.

Genesis and Distribution of Cinema

Cinema’s development into its current form is more complex, lengthier and less homogeneous and centralised than that of Music Video. Its inextricable connection with MTV and the identity of teenage rebellion is converse to Cinema’s form context in which it is consumed, with a range of audience and purposes. The Lumière Brothers’ 1896 ‘Arival of the Train’ established some of the crucial fundamentals of continuity in shot type and edit. Many of the initial techniques of the medium which serve to tell a narrative to an audience have remained the same and, though some eras such as French New Wave did challenge some established ideas, the medium has not seen a seismic shift in the context in which it is viewed, nor expected interpretation from the audience. It is for this reason that Music Video and Cinema serve their audiences differently.

Cinema has been predominantly shown in group scenarios, from prestigious science conferences in the late 19th century to the popularisation of cinemas over the next 100 years. Even with the contemporary disruption of film viewership in the form of on-demand streaming platforms like Netflix and Mubi, the construction of Cinema has largely remained the same as a staple of storytelling in media. This is in direct opposition to the transformation in platform that Music Video has gone under.

Introduction of YouTube to Music Video

Post-MTV, Music Video re-platformed to YouTube; this would go on to change the context of Music Video’s interpretation. Founded in 2009, Vevo’s channel grew on YouTube to be the primary collection of Music Video entertainment. As a place of impossibly complex cultural intertextual iconography, references and subcommunities, it was different to that of the homogenous format of MTV and subsequently expedited the postmodern characteristics of the form. YouTube was unatavistic and dynamic, now with an open, hyper free-market view of online content. Every artist had a reason to create a Music Video: not as a supplement to auditory entertainment as previously the case, but as content to coincide with the meaning of the music. ‘The change in distribution channels for music also influenced music video and additionally engendered new forms resulting from certain requirements of the media … The circumstances of their reception (e.g., lower image quality) are taken into account by reducing the complexity of the relationship of image, music, and text.’ 3 Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena (2010)

The migration of Music Video content to the ultrademocratic platform: YouTube, seemed to coincide with the rise of intertextual reference. This a reflection of internet culture: an endlessly connected and large cannon. ‘YouTube functions both as a portal of cultural memory and as a concept’ 4 (Hilderbrand 2007). This level of intertextuality and collective presumed knowledge is only possible at scale where there are centralised repository and simultaneous meta-commentary on content. Derivative pastiche taken from Cinema is utilised not only by Music Video on that platform but by a range of users, indeed it is built into the modus operandi of YouTube as a platform. ‘Appropriated clips often include copyrighted music or footage used in the service of new derivative works; such uses range from amateur music videos as users dance and lip-synch to popular songs in their bedrooms, to complex fan...re-edits of footage’ 4 (Hilderbrand 2007)

YouTube’s propensity for heterogeneity is fuelled by new filmmaking techniques that challenge the typical narrative conventions of Cinema. 'Spread of internet platforms such as YouTube have led to the updating and recombination of already familiar techniques—for example...Using an idea that Matthew Cullen had employed in his video for Pork and Beans by Weezer (2008)—namely, inviting people famous from YouTube to participate in his video -the Israeli musician Kutiman used excerpts from YouTube videos as samples for his Thru You project ( 2009 ) and mixed them into new audio-visual compositions’ 4 Lucas Hilderbrand (2007)

Music Video, whilst not divorced from narrative, does not share the same reliance on narrative that Cinema does. The long-standing traditions of Cinema also perpetuate against itself; an audience has preconceived notions of film codes and conventions, whereas today Music Video is a dynamic, unpredictable medium, primed to change direction spontaneously. ‘[music] videos are concerned with offering up some more or less overt narrative, with depicting mini-Active worlds, through the song's lyrics, through a visualisation of lyrics and performance ...In its knowing, self-reflexive direct address to spectators who are deemed to be always there, music video con-structs a dreamscape, replete with images that the spectator internalises...With Music Video, ‘the most accessible form of that larger tendency known as postmodern art’, the old distinction between fiction and reality simply dissolves.’ 2 (Mundy 1994)

Textual Reference to Cinema in Contemporary Music Video

In rapper, slowthai’s music video in collaboration with Skepta for his song ‘CANCELLED’, the Directors, a duo under the name ‘THE REST’- utilise intertextual reference to portray the Horror genre. To make this clear to the audience, they use intertextual cinematic references to horror classics in the Mise-en-scène, movement and plot of the music video. The references are obvious and copy directly from the film; from set design and costume to the actions of the character, portrayed by slowthai himself. In a reference to the 2000s classic, American Psycho, slowthai plays the protagonist, Patrick Bateman, acting out a scene in which he murders a co-worker with an axe. The visual language of this scene is clearly not mocking American Psycho but paying homage to the film with an accurate pastiche, the only obviously intentional difference coming with slowthai playing Patrick instead of the original actor, Christian Bale. This pastiche fits directly into YouTube’s culture of intertextuality and experimenting with already told stories, reworking them to reference genre as a collective, challenge genre or mock it. This direct ‘copy’ of visual language might be interpreted negatively in the context of cinema but is celebrated in Music Video due to its history and inherent ties with intertextuality.

Another example in which intertextuality is used, is in The Weeknd’s Music Video for his song, After Hours. This example is especially interesting in its heterogeneity, the entire text references multiple films consistently. Obvious references to Cinema include Casino (1995), Fear and loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Joker (2019), Uncut Gems (2019) and Psycho (1960). This is not to say that all references are direct copies, it is additionally not to say that there are not equally deliberate choices of intertextual reference used by the directors that are more subtle and ergo subject to interpretation. An example would be part of the set design in the beginning of the video, with the carpet resembling that of the set design in The Shining (1980). After Hours successfully creates moments of pastiche by focusing on the cinematography of the texts it references, or ‘hypotext’ as espoused in Gerard Genette's Theory of Transtexuality. 5 Genette, G. Palimpsests (1997). This text challenges the conventions of Cinema inherently in its pastiche but also by its confidence in referencing multiple texts back-to-back, creating a montage of interpretations of Cinema. Thus, creating an interactive experience for the viewer, as they presume a reference is coming up. Opposed to Cinematic values of character development and monomythic narrative, After Hours turns its form into a guessing game of whether you as a viewer can recognise the shot and know the hypotext; it plays fast and loose with narrative and draws from the visuals of Cinema to project character traits onto the protagonist portrayed by the artist.

Exploration of Meaning Behind Intertextual Reference

As foretold by the varied ways these two Music Videos approach reference to Cinema, imitation, parody and pastiche are dependent on two variables: the video’s Director’s intention and the viewer's perception of the reference, for without an audience recognising the hypotext, there is effectively no intertextual reference. The use of hypertextuality in music video often allows the character of the Music Video to take on attitudinal and/or stylistic traits of the character from the text they are interpreting. Where transmediality is traditionally used in a marketing context between disciplines like comics and films, here the intertextuality is enhanced by presumed knowledge. The artist portraying a character the audience knows requires a suspension of disbelief; just as a hero is played in any traditional narrative, iconic characters can become monomythic in a comparably universally, understandable and digestible way. ‘The relationship between parody and its target is never of a uniform and easily definable nature, either. Parody's attitude towards its target is often ambivalent and may range from degradation and mockery to respectful admiration’ 6 Florian Bauer (2011).

Music Video, positioned in this essay to be the dynamic antagonist to Cinema obviously borrows from Cinema, but one could argue it works conversely, too: there has been a floccinaucinihilipilification of Music Video’s influence on cinema as pointed out by Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena (2010) 3. ‘[Music] video developed a high art form as it increasingly began to be used successfully as an experimental platform for technical innovations that then made their way into the cinema. Examples include digital techniques such as the "frozen moment " that was integrated into the narrative of The Matrix in 1999, which had been employed in Michel Gondry's video for "Like a Rolling Stone" (The Rolling Stones, 1995)‘ -pp226. This clear influence from the newer medium has been carried over by the creators of Music Video. ‘The aesthetic innovations of the music video by experimenters like Gondry have since been used increasingly in the cinema, not least because many video directors have gone over to the film industry. Their videos influence entire film sequences and establish new forms of narrative. PP-228' 3 Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena (2010)

Intertextual Structuralist Theory

Pastiche carries with it, a propensity to be assumedly irreverent, despite the most notable examples of intertextuality bearing respect for the works from which they derive inspiration. Pastiche is also varied in its use of multidisciplinary references; from choreography to camera movement and mise-en-scene.

When discussing intertextuality, regardless of the medium, it is important to mention Gerard Genette's Theory of Transtexuality; a structuralist view of intertextual reference explored in his book, Literature in the Second Degree. Undoubtedly a doyen of structuralist ideology, Genette splits the broad label of textuality into five categories, whilst also conceding the types cannot be completely divorced from each other due to their reciprocal nature. From Genette’s five categories, the type of pastiche that contemporary Music Video utilises, breaking the typical codes and conventions of cinema, is Metatextuality. ‘Metatextuality is, according to Genette, the relationship most often labelled “commentary, and it unites a source text to another, without necessarily citing it, in fact sometimes without naming it” ’ 6 Florian Bauer (2011).

The advent of YouTube has led to an architectural reading of the hypotext(s). Frequently referring to a group of texts from the same genre from which emerges a new, combined cultural text. Importantly, this relies upon ‘the reader's expectations and thus their reception of the work’ 7 Genette, G., & Macksey, R. (1997). Whilst this is also true of Cinema, it is more often taken advantage of by Music Video.

Conclusion

The frequently changing and fluid nature of the online cultural memory is antithetical to that of the established canon of Cinema, thus creating a blurred line between the hypotexts. It is important to note, however, the blurred lines are only opaque to those trying to understand the derivation of the hypotext and not to the audience, who is succeeds at understanding the greater picture of the metatextual reference. In toto, Music Video’s use of intertextuality in any form as defined by structuralist theory challenges Cinema in its defiance to the establishment, allowing an audience to be more fluid in their interpretation. Inherent qualities of Music Video such as length, informality in viewing and distribution allow it to challenge traditional Cinematic conventions.

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Bibliography

1. Thomas Johansson, (1992). Music video, youth culture and postmodernism, Popular Music and Society. Dept of Sociology, University of Lund, Sweden, vol 1 (1), pp.11-18

2. John Mundy, (1994). Postmodernism and Music Video. Critical Survey, vol. 6 (2), pp.259

3. Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena (2010). Rewind, Play, Fast Forward: The Past, Present, and Future of the Music Video (Cultural and Media Studies). Transcript Publishing, vol 1 (1), Page Number pp.226-228

4. Lucas Hilderbrand (2007). “YouTube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge.” Film Quarterly, vol 61 (no. 1), pp. 48–57.

5. Genette, G. Palimpsests (1997). Literature in the Second Degree. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. pp.1-

6. Florian Bauer (2011) Intertextuality and parody. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna. Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies Supervisor: Seidl, Monika, Vol 1 (1), pp 1-20

7. Genette, G., & Macksey, R. (1997). Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. (1) , pp1-460