Rewind – play – fast forward. The past, present and future of the music video: introduction

Rewind - Play - Fast Forward

The Past, Present and Future of the Music Video:

Introduction

HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

"Art presses the "Stop"- and "Rewind"- buttons in the stream of life: It makes time stop. It offers reflection and re­

collection, it is an antidote against lost certitudes."1

Like p e r h a p s n o o t h e r m e d i u m , the m u s i c video clip is m a r k i n g a n d shap­

ing o u r everyday culture: film, art, literature, a d v e r t i s e m e n t s ­ they all are clearly u n d e r the i m p a c t of t h e m u s i c video in their aesthetics, their technical p r o c e d u r e s , visual w o r l d s or narrative strategies. T h e r e a s o n for this h a s not only to be s o u g h t in the fact that s o m e of the video di­

rectors a r e n o w v e n t u r i n g into art or a d v e r t i s e m e n t , b u t that also peo­

ple n o t w o r k i n g in the field of p r o d u c i n g video clips are i n d e b t e d to this m e d i u m .2 T h u s , m o r e or less f o r m e r video clip­directors s u c h as C h r i s C u n n i n g h a m or Jonas A k e r l u n d have established t h e m s e l v e s successfully with their creations w h i c h very o f t e n are based o n ideas a n d concepts, originally developed for earlier m u s i c videos: b o t h C u n n i n g h a m ' s w o r k s Flex a n d Monkey Drummer, c o m m i s s i o n e d in 2 0 0 0 respectively 2 0 0 1 by t h e A n t h o n y d'Offay Gallery, evolved o u t of his earlier m u s i c videos.' Flex relies o n the fantastic a n d weightless u n d e r w a t e r c o s m o s C u n n i n g h a m d e s i g n e d for the i m a g e s that a c c o m p a n i e d Portishead's Only you in 1998.

Monkey Drummer* is heavily based o n t h e s o u n d t r a c k w r i t t e n by t h e Irish m u s i c i a n Aphex Twin (Richard David James) for w h o m C u n n i n g h a m h a d previously directed f a m o u s videos s u c h as Come to Daddy (1997) a n d Win- dowlicker (1999). A k e r l u n d , o n the o t h e r h a n d , m a d e a n even m o r e direct r e c o u r s e to his earlier m u s i c video. His film, Turn the Page, p r e s e n t e d in 2 0 0 4^at t h e Schirn in F r a n k f u r t in t h e context of t h e short­film exhibition j-minutes, u s e s exclusively footage h e h a d shot six years earlier for t h e

Originalveröffentlichung in: Keazor, Henry ; Wübbena, Thorsten (Hrsgg.): Rewind, play, fast forward : the past, present and future of the music video, Bielefeld 2010, S. 7-31

8 HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

video clip, accompanying the song Turn the Page by the band Metallica (which also is used as a soundtrack for the film).5

In the field of literature not only directors such as Chris C u n n i n g h a m have served as models for characters in novels like William Gibson's 2 0 0 3 novel Pattern Recognition in which the clip of a fictitious m u s i c video-di­

rector w h o puts "robot girls in his video"6 is characterized by the follow­

ing words: "No sci­fi kitsch for Damien. Dreamlike things in the dawn half­light, their small breasts gleaming, white plastic shining faints as old marble"7 (this a clear reference to C u n n i n g h a m ' s m u s i c video for Bjork's All is Full of Love, directed in 1999: fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Still from the music video by Chris Cunningham:

Bjork, All is Full of Love, 1999

But also narrative structures a n d devices are taken over f r o m the m u s i c video. For example, the writer Jasper Fforde (who had previously worked as a c a m e r a m a n ) was obviously inspired by a m u s i c video w h e n h e en­

dowed its h e r o i n e Thursday Next9 with the capacity to read and thus insert herself physically into the context and the setting of any given book and to t h u s allow its plot to feature abrupt changes in places, times and contexts

­ exactly as seen in the f a m o u s clip shot by John Landis for Michael Jack­

son's song Black or White in 1991 where the singer also abruptly changes f r o m o n e cultural a n d narrative setting to the other.'0 And as a hint that his novel also deals with the history of pop­ and rock music, Fforde equips Thursday Next with a car that is m o r e or less identical with Janis Joplin's f a m o u s Porsche 356c Cabriolet (figs. 2 & 3)."

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Fig. 2:Janis Joplin's Porsche }$6c Cabriolet (left)

Fig. y. Mark Thomas: Cover Illustration for Jasper Fforde, S o m e t h i n g Rotten, 2004 (right)

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It may sound strange to state that the m u s i c video is also influencing ad­

vertisements, given that a video clip is m o r e or less an advertisement it­

self, but the influence is increasingly evident. In 2 0 0 6 , for example, an advertisement for the c o m p u t e r company Apple (fig. 4, left) stirred pop m u s i c fans and m u s i c journalists, as well as the general press because the advertisement relied on images which were n o t h i n g m o r e than a re­

m a k e of a m u s i c video produced three years earlier for the song Such Great Heights by the pop group The Postal Service (fig. 4, right).12

Fig. 4; Comparison of stills taken from an "Apple"-advertisement by Josh (Melnik) andXander (Charity), 2006 (left) and from their

music video for The Postal Service, Such Great Heights, 2003 (right)

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Likewise, a recent advertisement for the candy m i n t "Tic Tac'"! is heavily indebted to Spike Jonze's groundbreaking music video for Fatboy Slim's track Weapon of Choice f r o m 2001. Both the commercial and the music video feature a tired salesman (fig. 5 & 6), sitting in an armchair in a hotel lobby, next to a trolly with cleaning products and a radio (fig. 7 & 8).

W h e r e a s the salesman in Spike Jonze's video hears Fatboy Slim's m u s i c c o m i n g f r o m the radio and is incited to dance, the salesman in the "Tic Tac" commercial requires the additional help of a slim blonde w h o shakes a box of "Tic Tacs".

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Fig. 6: Still from the advertisement by Jacky Oudneyfor "Tic Tac", 2008

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Fig. 8: Still from the advertisement by Jacky Oudney for "Tic Tac", 2008

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The possibility that the m e a n s of a m u s i c video could be instead used o n e day as a vehicle for election c a m p a i g n s was already envisioned in 1992 by director/actor T i m Robbins w h o in his satire Bob Roberts plays a ho­

m o n y m o u s singing conservative politician whose revisionist approach is

­ a m o n g others ­ underlined by his adaptation of Don Alan Pennebaker's legendary (and for the m u s i c video: highly influential) film s e q u e n c e for Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues f r o m 1965. T h e content of Dy­

lan's skeptical and liberal approach is not only reversed by Roberts into its exact opposite by substituting the title of Dylan's a l b u m The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964) against the cynical "Times are Changin' Back", or by replacing the lyrics on Dylan's f a m o u s cue cards (fig. 9) with slogans such as "By any m e a n s necessary, m a k e millions", but also by exchanging the f a m o u s bystanders in Pennebaker's clip ­ a m o n g t h e m the pop poet Allen Ginsberg (fig. 9) ­ with two bankers a n d sexy dancers (fig. 10). That this political use of music videos as a ­ in the end: very successful ­ part of an election campaign is not just an exception, but a consequently followed strategy becomes even clearer in the course of the film w h e n Roberts again relies on this m e d i u m in order to also advertise his patriotism.

Fig. 5; Still from the music video by Spike Jonze: Fatboy Slim, Weapon of Choice, 2001

fig. 7: Still from the music video by Spike Jonze: Fatboy Slim, Weapon of Choice, 2001

2 HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

Fig. 9: Still from the film by Don Alan Pennebaker: Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues, 1965

Fig. 10: Still from the film by Tim Robbins: Bob Roberts, 1992

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Interestingly, in "real life" (as opposed to the reality depicted in a film) it was rather in the politically opposed party of the democrats that video clips were used as part of the recent election campaign in America: fa­

m o u s sympathizers of Barack O b a m a (such as, a m o n g others, the actress Scarlett Johansson, the singers Nicole Scherzinger and John Legend and the m u s i c i a n Herbie Hancock) had interpreted his now f a m o u s "Yes, we can"­speech in February 2 0 0 8 u n d e r the direction of Will. I. A m (from the group Black Eyed Peas) and Jesse Dylan (the son of Bob Dylan) in the f o r m of a m u s i c video in order to p r o m o t e the candidate (fig. 11).

Fig. a: Still from the music video by Will. I. Am and Jesse Dylan, Yes We Can, 2008

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In three short days, the video garnered m o r e than a million views on YouTube and 10 million on the host site, yeswecan.dipdive.com, and was even awarded an E m m y in June 2 0 0 8 in the n e w category "Best New Ap­

proaches in Daytime Entertainment".'4

To finish o u r short survey of f o r m s indebted to t h e m u s i c video, we want to briefly m e n t i o n the c i n e m a w h e r e the style, narration a n d the technical means, developed in the field of the music video have had a great impact ­ be it that movie directors, obviously impressed by the m u s i c vid­

eo, have adapted for example its imagery '5,editing or pace (as just one early

R E W I N D - P L A Y - F A S T F O R W A R D 1 3

example one could refer to Tony Scott's film Top Gun f r o m 1986), or that directors of music videos were a n d are shifting to film making, thus bring­

ing with t h e m and importing s o m e of the hallmarks of the m u s i c video into the cinema. O n e can think here about directors such as David Fincher, Mark Romanek, Michel Gondry or the already m e n t i o n e d Spike Jonze. But such a shift f r o m m u s i c advertisement to film already h a p p e n e d in the 6 0 s w h e n directors such as Claude Lelouch, Francis Ford Coppola or Robert Altman first learned the filmic ropes by shooting so­called "Scopitones", m o r e or less direct antecedents of the m u s i c video, and then changed over to the cinema of the Nouvelle Vague without forgetting what they had learned while m a k i n g the musical short films.'6

But exactly such a change f r o m h e l m i n g a m u s i c video to directing a film now symptomizes a crisis in which the video clip finds itself after years of both financial and aesthetic prosperity (for which the notorious 7 million dollars reportedly paid for Mark Romanek's video for Michael and Janet Jackson's song Scream in 1995 is perhaps the m o s t incisive example).'7 Due to economic declines over the past years the record companies have in­

vested increasingly less m o n e y into the production of m u s i c videos while in turn their way of presentation has also drastically changed. Whereas music videos were once shown on television o n m u s i c channels such as MTV '8, the Internet, cellphones and other e m e r g i n g platforms with their, however, reduced quality considering vision and sound, have overtaken the market. Thus, already in June 2 0 0 0 Mark Cohn and Ken Martin (under the n a m e "The Broad Band") mocked the f o r m e r h y m n of the m u s i c video, the s o n g " Video Killed the Radio Star" by T h e Buggies, chosen by MTV o n the 1st August 1981 in order to inaugurate and hail its airplay, by sneering: Internet Killed the Video Star.'9

Since that time, the authors of articles, blogs and books have asked time and again whether or not the m u s i c video is dead (fig. 12).

Fig. 12: Screenshot from website forum http://videos.antville.org/ (15 July 2006)

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More often t h a n not, the answer has been: yes.

1 4 HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

Nevertheless it h a s to be asked if this a n s w e r is not p e r h a p s pre­

m a t u r e a n d at least m o o t : while o n e m i g h t n o t w a n t to a r g u e with the viewpoint that t h e m u s i c video in its u p to n o w familiar a n d k n o w n f o r m m i g h t have started to cease to exist, o n e m i g h t however ask if p e r h a p s it will just c o n t i n u e to exist in another, n e w f o r m . "Music TV was yesterday. Today, you best watch m u s i c videos together with f r i e n d s late in t h e evening, tightly p r e s s e d together in f r o n t of t h e c o m p u t e r screen ­ or o n t h e big m o v i e screen", t h e journalist Sarah Stahli writes in h e r i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h e section Sound el Stories of t h e 45lhSolothurn Film Festival 2010 in w h i c h t h e best Swiss m u s i c videos were p r e s e n t e d a n d a w a r d e d .2 0

Moreover, it can be read as a sign of e n d u r i n g sturdiness that the m u ­ sic video f u r t h e r m o r e tries to c o m e at h a n d s with the factors threatening it instead of blindly continuing to do its business as usual. This might be eased by the fact that it was in the genre of the m u s i c video in the first place that the idea of a n online presence of a musical star was conceived and visualized: In Paul H u n t e r ' s clip for Jennifer Lopez' song If You Had My Love, released in May 1999, the singer was presented as a sort of a

"belle captive" (as o n e could put it by quoting the title of a novel by Alain Robbe­Grillet), because she s e e m s to be confined to a series of white, clini­

cal r o o m s where everything is u n d e r observation. While she p e r f o r m s her song, cameras, controlled by online viewers, are following her m o v e m e n t s , broadcasting t h e m to different locations such as a garage, a call center, pri­

vate h o m e s , a dance hall etc. w h e r e J.Lo's p e r f o r m a n c e is followed on TV­

and computer­screens by her audience. That Lopez is indeed m o r e or less the marionette of an interactive display, becomes evident w h e n a user out of given m e n u chooses to view the lyrics s u n g by h e r or selects a certain dance style she t h e n has to p e r f o r m d u r i n g h e r song ­ or w h e n h e chooses to see her taking a shower.

Of course, the reality as it was viewable on Internet TV and f r o m Feb­

ruary 2 0 0 5 on at the YouTube­platform2 1 was m u c h less glamorous and stylish than the s u r r o u n d i n g s of J.Lo, but it went m o r e or less into the s a m e direction.

In any case, the genre of the video clip nowadays does not ignore the YouTube­phenomenon, but instead tries to benefit f r o m it, as two briefly discussed examples, both produced in Spring 2 0 0 8 , show.

In May 2 0 0 8 the band Weezer, the 1995 w i n n e r s of four MTV­music video awards for the video directed by Spike Jonze for their song Buddy

Holly, released a clip for their latest single "Pork and Beans". It is not by chance that this video did p r e m i e r e not on MTV or any other TV­channel, but on YouTube. This was appropriate insofar as the video features m a n y people m a d e f a m o u s by YouTube and the Internet, s o m e of t h e m not even k n o w n by their proper n a m e s b u t being characterized rather by their ac­

tivities on YouTube such as "catching Raybans with one's face", the "Free H u g s Campaign", the "Dancing Banana", "Diet Coke and Mentos erup­

tions" or "Will it blend" (the latter two featuring phony records and experi­

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merits). Partially chosen by the m e m b e r s of Weezer, each of w h o m picked their favorites, all these people were contacted by the director of the clip, Mathew Cullen, after which they were flown over to Los Angeles for the four-day shoot. Whereas an episode of the cartoon series South Park had previously rather m o c k e d these celebrities2 2, Cullen followed the path in­

dicated by the m u s i c video for the Canadian rock b a n d T h e Barenaked La­

dies, w h o in the clip for their song Sound of Your Voice f r o m February 2 0 0 7 have also replaced their own appearance with the presentation of several YouTube­celebrities, lip­synch the song a n d p u r s u e their own original a n d inventive activities.

W h i l e Cullen declared his clip to b e a "celebration of that creativ­

ity", it is quite obvious that t h e video ­ by f e a t u r i n g YouTube­celebrities

­ was also trying h a r d to g e n e r a t e greater attention by t h e YouTube­

a u d i e n c e as well as by other m e d i a w h i c h are carefully a n d / o r distrust­

fully observing YouTube a n d its cult a n d culture. T h e strategy was suc­

cessful. T h e video had over 1.2 million views in its first 24 h o u r s o n YouTube a n d after only f o u r days 3.6 million people h a d watched it. T h e video quickly attained t h e status of being t h e m o s t watched video o n t h e Internet d u r i n g t h o s e days2 3 ­ a success w h i c h recalls t h e t i m e w h e n John Landis' g r o u n d b r e a k i n g video for Michael Jackson's Thriller was a n n o u n c e d a n d broadcasted o n MTV a n d broke records w i t h respect to a u d i e n c e ratings.

T h e other example comes f r o m Germany: Also in Spring, in April 2 0 0 8 , the G e r m a n band Wir sind Helden released a video to accompa­

ny the single Die Konkurrenz. Instead of hiring a director, the b a n d had posted a notice o n their website the February before, which encouraged their audience to shoot their own video to suit the song a n d to h a n d it in. Arguing that self m a d e things are s o m e h o w nicer, the b a n d invited their fans u n d e r the title "Mehr Wettbewerb mit der Konkurrenz" to let their creativity flow (the title, in English m e a n i n g "More competition with the concurrence", already indicates the conceptual nature of the approach:

videos were invited to compete with o n e another in order to accompany a song on "concurrence").2 4 W h e t h e r reference was m a d e to the lyrics of the song or not was irrelevant ­ o n their website the b a n d just stated that eve­

rything, except naked w o m e n and helicopters, was welcome.2 5 Out of the many s u b m i s s i o n s received, rather than choose the best video, the b a n d took just the best scenes f r o m the various entries and t h e n edited t h e m into a m u s i c video for their song.2 6

T h e final result is not only interesting insofar as it c o m b i n e s heteroge­

neous material, reminiscent of Weezer's Pork and Beans, but also because of the way this material was f r a m e d and presented. O n the o n e h a n d the small screen space, featuring the clickable "Play"­icon, with below the control device (fig. 13) clearly m a k e s reference to the typical YouTube­

appearance (fig. 14): thus, despite the fact that the s h o w n snippets were not taken f r o m YouTube, the video ironically present itself as a typical YouTube­video.

HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

Fig. ly. Still from the music video by and for Wir sind Helden, Die Konkurrenz, 2008

Fig. 14: Screenshot from YouTube, displaying the music video by Mathew Cullen: Weezer, Pork a n d Beans, 2008

But the self-made character of the whole screen does not look like some­

thing f r o m the Internet, but rather like s o m e t h i n g tinkered out of rough­

ly cut and painted cardboard in order to just artlessly simulate a typical YouTube­screen. It is interesting to state that this look was not conceived originally by Wir sind Helden themselves but that this, too, is ­ so to speak ­ second hand, which m e a n s : borrowed f r o m s o m e w h e r e else. T h e correct t e r m in order to describe the appearance of the child­like, rough style would be certainly "sweded", because this is the word coined by Jerry, the protagonist of Michel Gondry's feature film Be Kind - Rewind (2008).

Faced with the d i l e m m a of having accidentally erased the entire collection of his friend Mike's video­rental­store, Jerry decides to re­make the lost films with the simplest m e a n s and with h i m and his friends as the actors, taking on roles such as characters f r o m Rambo, The Lion King, Rush Hour, Ghostbusters, When We Were Kings, Driving Miss Daisy and Robocop - with charmingly a m a t e u r results which, surprisingly, m e e t the taste of the cus­

t o m e r s of the store w h o request m o r e and m o r e movie remakes of that kind. Since Jerry, in order to explain his source for these films, claims that they are c o m i n g f r o m Sweden (thus also justifying the long waiting times and especially the high prices h e asks for these European "imports"), the r e d o n e films are quickly branded as "sweded". It is exacdy this "sweded"

look of the rough and handcrafted tinkering that has successfully proven itself, appearing not only as part of such a re­modeled YouTube­screen (fig.

15), but, apart f r o m the Wir sind Helden­clip, even in advertisements for TV Soap Operas.2 7

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Fig. 15; Screenshot from the former website for the film Be Kind - Rewind, 2008

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However, it is important to r e m e m b e r that the director of Be Kind was and still is a m u s i c video director and that h e had designed a n d developed the "sweded" aesthetics already in the context of his earlier m u s i c videos (such as the video for Walkie Talkie Man by the b a n d Steriogram, shot in Spring 2004).2 8 While the r o u g h reproduction of things in the video such as helicopters, a recording studio, musical i n s t r u m e n t s and cars (fig. 16) gives the clip a wild and f u n n y appearance, Gondry sanctioned this look in the context of his feature film as d u e to the m o d e s t m e a n s Jerry and his friends have at their disposition w h e n trying to re-make a Hollywood blockbuster.

Fig. 36: Still from the music video by Michel Gondry:

Steriogram, Walkie Talkie Man, 2004

At the s a m e time, this is in a certain way a c o m m e n t Gondry also m a k e s on the genre of the m u s i c video itself which was often considered as the cheap little sister of the big, expensive Hollywood blockbuster.2 9 It is per­

haps also d u e to this parallel that Jerry's "sweded" films in Be Kind have m o r e or less the s a m e duration like a m u s i c video, that is of a r o u n d 3 m i n u t e s in which the content of a whole film ­ as s o m e t i m e s also in the

HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WOBBENA

case of a music video - is condensed, and that this short, cheap, "sweded"

versions, however, are then more appreciated by the customers than the long, expensive Hollywood-originals (author Matt Hanson's words "Music video has become meta-cinema" come to the mind).30

One could continue this thread even by putting Jerry's cheaply look­

ing "sweded" films into relation to the current video clips which have also lost their once sometimes blockbuster­like budgets and have now to try to also charm the audience with most modest means ­ this not only by making recourse to the humble YouTube­style3', but also by coming up with clever ideas. One can here directly refer to the example of the most recent endeavour of the Los Angeles band OK Go: In a music video (di­

rected by fames Frost, the band itself in cooperation with Syyn Labs'2 and released in March 2010) for their song This Too Shall Pass^, they tried to set something against Hollywood and its costly digital effects by putting their credo "Back to the mechanical"34 into visual action. With the inten­

tion "to create cool stuff which you can see is also really real"35, they de­

signed together with their collaborators a machine, displayed over the two storeys of a warehouse and involving "more than 700 household objects, from flying rat traps to a plummeting piano" into a frenetic chain reaction, triggered by a toy lorry, then going on continuously for four minutes (the song's length) and finding its climax in a series of paint­loaded canons, be­

ing fired off against the four band members. The result, as journalist John Harlow concludes: "Even by the overheated standards of the internet, the success of the (...) video (...) has been extraordinary. In its first few days of release on the web, it has attracted more than 8.7m viewers."36

Interestingly, with this approach OK Go in a certain way did nothing else than to repeat the earlier success of a very similar video which, al­

though conceived as an advertisement for a car, was nevertheless directed in 2003 by the renowned music video director Antoine Bardou­Jacquet.37

In this advertisement, Bardou­Jacquet staged a kind of "Ballet Mecanique"

by combining components of the then new Honda Accord to a very simi­

lar, complicated 1:45 minute chain reaction which in the end did lead to nothing else than the closing of the car's trunk which, eventually, did made the car roll from a tilting platform ­ an action accompanied by an off­voice asking "Isn't it nice when things just work?"38 Given the meticu­

lous interaction of the isolated car parts, starting with a small, single, roll­

ing cog, and ending with the entire rolling car, the choreography of the components suggests an assembly belt which in the end launches the sum of all these interacting pieces, the finished car.

The short film has become a huge success on YouTube where it is often presented under the catch­name "Honda ­ The Cog". So it seems as if ­ again ­ a YouTube­success would have triggered the inspiration for an­

other, latest YouTube­success. However, as Thomas Elsaesser has recently emphasized, the Honda­advertisement itself is heavily indebted to a fore­

runner:39 In 1987 the artist duo (Peter) Fischli & (David) Weiss presented a 30 minute video at the Kassel documenta 8 under the title Der Lauf der

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Dinge ("The Way T h i n g s Go") which did m a r k their international break­

through. As in the case of the Honda­advertisement, it shows a chain reac­

tion of different items, p u t together in a 70­100 feet long structure inside a warehouse, but while the Honda­advertisement relies mainly on mechani­

cal interaction, Fischli & Weiss also included chemical procedures which often e n h a n c e the s u s p e n s e because the viewer has to wait for t h e m to take place and to have their effect, so that there is always the uncertainty if the process is successfully continuing or if it will get interrupted. Accord­

ing to s o m e sources the artist d u o tried to sue the H o n d a ­ c o m p a n y be­

cause they considered the advertisement as a plagiarism4", but it certainly would have been very difficult to prove this, given that Der Lauf der Dinge itself could be put into a long line of similar, earlier conceptions: Not only did director Richard D o n n e r (who has a weak spot for such chain­reacting ballets ­ see for example also the b e g i n n i n g of his 1983 movie Superman HI) already in 1985 include a scene into his movie The Goonies where a simple door­opener is conceived as a chain­reacting contraption, but the entire concept can be traced back to the idea of Reuben Lucius Goldberg (mainly k n o w n today as Rube Goldberg: 1883­1970), a Jewish A m e r i c a n sculptor, author, engineer, inventor, and cartoonist, w h o is today f a m o u s for exactly the invention of complex, chain­reaction driven devices that p e r f o r m astonishingly simple tasks in most complicated and convoluted ways (in his comics Goldberg f r o m 1934 on m a d e his character "Profes­

sor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts" invent and build such machines) ­ t h u s his n a m e b e c a m e the epitome for these "Rube Goldberg machines".4 1

To return to the OK Go­video and his ancestors: They are not only linked by the basic concept of s u c h a "Rube Goldberg machine", being each time at the center of the films, but, especially in the case of the Fi­

schli & Weiss­project and the OK Go­video, also by the underlying bias of the works. Adapting Elsaesser's word, originally addressed to a com­

parison of the Fischli & Weiss­video with the Honda­advertisement, b u t actually even fitting better concerning the OK Go­clip, o n e can state: "(...) in both works, one notes a studied a n a c h r o n i s m , a retrospective temporal deferral at work. (...) Fischli & Weiss produced their tape a r o u n d t h e t i m e w h e n artists were seriously considering their r e s p o n e to the new m e d i a technologies of video compositing and digital editing. Their work is clear­

ly a m a n i f e s t o in favor of materiality a n d indexicality, a n ironic m i d d l e finger stuck in the face of the digital to come, a n d taking their stand in the heated debate about the loss of indexicality in the post­photographic age."4 2 Exactly s u c h an e m p h a s i s a n d celebration of the "visble, tangible world" and the insistence "on a linear causality vanishing in the media"

(as opposed for example to Lady Gaga­clips), can be also observed in the OK Go­video.

All this shows that the m u s i c video c o n t i n u e s to do w h a t it u s e d to do for decades: to look for all k i n d s of possible inspiration, to try to do s o m e t h i n g n e w with it a n d to t h u s inspire itself as well as other m e d i a forms.

2 o HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

However, the signs of its crisis can't be denied either - it is perhaps not wonder that discussions about the m u s i c video very often feature the words "rethinking" and "reinventing". As two examples a m o n g m a n y oth­

ers we'd like to refer first to the book published by Matt H a n s o n in 2 0 0 6 , titled Reinventing Music Video - Next Generation Directors. Second we want to m e n t i o n the Swedish designer Jakob Trollback who, in March 2 0 0 7 , delivered a talk with the title "Rethinking the m u s i c video" in the context of the TED­conferences (the letters standing for "Technology, Entertain­

m e n t , Design", a series of talks started in 1984 where people f r o m these three areas c o m e together).4 3

It is, however, interesting to see that both the book published by Han­

son as well as the talk given by Trollback repeat rather than advance his­

tory: "Re­thinking" resp. "re­inventing" in their case t h u s takes on m o r e the colors of a n approach where already existing things of the past are taken u p and t h o u g h t t h r o u g h or invented again.4 4 Trollback's claim for example to have created a m u s i c video for Brian Eno's and David Byrne's 1981 song Moonlight in Glory45 that is m o r e directed by the m u s i c than driven by a filmmaker's concept and which t h u s achieves "to show purely the expression of a great song"4 6 (fig. 17), in our view ultimately leads to n o t h i n g m o r e than a rather t a m e and even not as original renewal of older videos which already showed the lyrics of a song while trying to translate its m u s i c into abstract patterns of light and colors (the most advanced masterpiece here is perhaps Bill Konersman's clip for Sign 'O' the Times by Prince, produced in 1987: fig. 18).47

Fig. 17: Still from the music video hy Jakob Trollback: Brian Eno and David Byrne, Moonlight in Glory, 2007

Fig. 18: Still from the music video by Bill Konersman:

Prince, Sign 'O' the Times, 1987

d

a Bom

Especially in Trollback's case the well­known phrase "If you don't know history, you are d o o m e d to repeat it" springs to m i n d . The unconscious orientation on the past (since it s e e m s that Trollback's claim to have creat­

ed such a pioneering video is only possible because h e apparently doesn't know about the Prince­clip) touches u p o n another important aspect of the crisis of the m u s i c video: it's historic d i m e n s i o n .

Apart f r o m the fact that books such as the o n e by H a n s o n or endeav­

ours such as the one by Trollback are simply repeating history, the cur­

rent crises shows clear parallels to a crisis which had previously beset the

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m u s i c video in the early 9 0 ' s . Just like today it was of a financial as well as consecutively aesthetical nature, and already then s o m e heralded this as the end of the m u s i c video while others saw it as a healthy process which would f u r t h e r allow only "good" m u s i c i a n s to have likewise "good" m u s i c videos (as opposed to the prior situation where, as the m u s i c video director Rudi Dolezal did put it, "there was a video clip for every idiotic band").4 8

This shows, however, that the m u s i c video has not one, but several histories4 9, which are separated by ruptures, breaks, e n d i n g s a n d starting points. Therefore, what we are witnessing now may not be the s y m p t o m s of an irretrievable end, but rather a point where the clip - once again - be­

gins to change, differentiate, evolve into s o m e t h i n g new.

This view is confirmed if we take a look at other histories of the m u s i c video in which the antecedents of the f o r m did not tie into each other, but followed each other paratactically. For example, the early "Phonoscenes", which after 1907 were produced with a certain routine a n d exhibited a refined correlation between t h e music, the lyrics a n d the images (see t h e article by T h o m a s Schmitt in this volume) did not directly lead into the

"Soundies" of the 4 0 s a n d 50s. Jazz musicians often did star in these short films which also and again presented a quite elaborated narrative in order to interpret the music, its sections a n d structures. Their s o m e t i m e s very artful visual style actually did anticipate already s o m e of the stylistic fea­

tures which were used later in the 7 0 s d u r i n g the rise of the m u s i c video (Gjon Mili's and N o r m a n Granz's film for Jammiri the Blues f r o m 1944 for example anticipates with its optical multiplication of a single m u s i c i a n s o m e m o m e n t s of Bruce Gowers' f a m o u s m u s i c video for Q u e e n ' s Bohe­

mian Rhapsody, m a d e in 1975: figs. 19 & 20).5 0

Fig. 39: Still from the film

by Gjon MM and Norman Fig. 20: Still from the music video by Granz: Jammin' the Blues, Bruce Gowers: Queen, B o h e m i a n '944 Rhapsody, 1975

T h e s a m e h a p p e n e d concerning the " P a n o r a m Jukebox" and the subse­

quent "Scopitones" whose directors didn't rely on the aesthetic achieve­

m e n t s of the Soundies, but started afresh instead. This was also perhaps d u e to t h e fact that t h e "Scopitone", which started to spread in t h e early 6 0 s , was considered a technical i m p r o v e m e n t over the "Panoram" w h e n the latter fell out of fashion d u e to the Second World War. T h e user of the "Panoram" didn't have any choice to view a particular film, but had

HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

to watch a sequence of black a n d white films as they were edited together ( m u c h in the s a m e way the audience of MTV later had to watch the se­

q u e n c e of clips chosen by the producers of the show or dictated by the charts). Instead, the user of a "Scopitone" could directly pick a particular film ( m u c h in the s a m e way the Internet currently allows)5' which was, moreover, in color. Such features m a d e the "Scopitone" a rival of black and white television, which was d o m i n a n t at the time.5 2 Following the decline of the Scopitones, the first directors of m u s i c videos didn't use and view the "Scopitones" in order to learn f r o m what had already been achieved there in t e r m s of visual styles a n d the possible linking of music, words and images, but rather started afresh (the "Scopitones" were actually only re­discovered m u c h later and then first rather as collector's items).

Given that the histories a n d pre­histories of the m u s i c videos stretch far f u r t h e r back than 1981 w h e n MTV appeared (see already the fact that MTV had to rely u p o n earlier shot clips in order to fill its program), the consen­

sus is that the beginning of the genre m u s t be sought m u c h earlier. T h e debate r e m a i n s open regarding how far one should go back w h e n seeking the earliest ancestor, however. As we suggested earlier, short films m a d e for and with m u s i c had been already produced a r o u n d 1900, and it s e e m s that o n e origin can be seen in the way T h o m a s Alva Edison had devised his "Kinteophone" in 1891 (fig. 21) ­ we say deliberately "devised" because actually the technical realization wasn't u p to Edison, w h o only d r e a m e d about the possibility of sitting comfortably in an armchair at h o m e while following a p e r f o r m a n c e at a n opera h o u s e in sight and sound.5 3

Fig. 21: Thomas Alva Edison's "Kineto- phone", 3895

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In fact, this vision really describes what the television set would m a k e possible later. But Edison's d r e a m was m o r e about m a k i n g a p e r f o r m a n c e accessible to the h o m e viewer ( m u c h in the way, DVDs with a "Live o n stage"-film do this), while a m u s i c video doesn't limit itself to this, even though it was and is clearly and mainly designed to work as a substitute for such a live p e r f o r m a n c e (already the pop group ABBA in the m i d d l e of the 70s deliberately used their m u s i c videos in such a way because o n e b a n d - m e m b e r loathed big international tours - so the g r o u p c a m e u p with so called " p r o m o films" and later m u s i c videos; thanks to t h e m the fans were r e c o m p e n s e d for this lack of live presence by, for example, granting t h e m visual access into the studio while the band records a song, or by even giving t h e m glimpses inside the everyday life and the emotional re­

lationships of the group members).5 4 But already this example shows that a m u s i c video didn't a n d doesn't limit itself to just record a live perform­

ance, but that it emancipates itself f r o m this very tight context a n d instead comes u p with a style which ­ in its best m o m e n t s ­ a i m s at interpreting the m u s i c o n a visual level. T h u s , a second e l e m e n t has to be considered w h e n dealing with m u s i c videos: the fact that m u s i c here receives a visual and reproducible interpretation. It is exactly this point of the possibility to exactly reproduce the always s a m e p e r f o r m a n c e that distinguishes the m u s i c video f r o m the opera5 5 while the fact that the interpretation of m u ­ sic in a m u s i c video can be freed f r o m any narrative also discerns the video clip f r o m f o r m s such as the musical. A possible candidate as o n e of the first antecedents for such a reproducible p e r f o r m a n c e can be seen in Philippe Jacques de L o u t h e r b o u r g ' s "Eidophusikon" (fig. 22), a small pic­

ture theatre, introduced in 1781, where mainly non­narrative p h e n o m e n a of nature such as storms and waterfalls were m o u n t e d on a small stage.

Fig. 22: Edward Francis Burney, Watercolor-Drawing of Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg's "Eidophusikon" (London, British Museum, ca. 1782)

HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

Given that the theatre was exclusively mechanical, the phenomena could be reproduced the same way continuously. Since music and sounds were an essential part of the whole show (and film director Werner Nekes even claims that no other than famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach's youngest son, Johann Christian, composed the music for these perform­

ances)56, one can agree with those authors who call the "Eidophusikon"

the most significant multi media picture theatre of the 18"' century.57

With this research for one of the earliest antecedents and forerunners of the music video we have, at the same time, already deeply stepped into the question what actually characterizes and defines a music video, and this leads further to the question about the methods we have at our hands in order to analyze the music videos.58 Because only an approach which has previously reflected upon the characteristics, elements, ingredients and components of a music video will also be able to accordingly analyze it and to appreciate all its single levels and parameters as well as their mu­

tual relationship and interaction.

Whereas earlier research has focused entirely on the images (given that music videos were considered to be nothing else than a derivate of the cinema) and neglected the music and especially the lyrics55, more recent attempts have attempted to encompass all the different factors composing and concerning a music video. Apart from the images themselves, these include the music, the lyrics, the whole context of the particular song and video such as the album, and the image of the musician or band, as it has been shaped also by former videos etc. By comparing the results of such a fully formed research with the analysis of other, especially earlier videos and their predecessors, we can better understand not only the past of the music video as a genre as well as its changes and developments, but also its present and ­ perhaps even ­its future. This all the more since one might ask not only questions about which specific histories to deal with, but also with which versions of the present, given that the genre of the mu­

sic video finds itself at different points of development in each country.60

This volume thus tries to tackle all the three time parameters ­ the past, the present and the future of the music video (which, as we have tried to show, are deeply interwoven), as well as the geographical aspect.

Thus, Part one ("Rewind") deals with the past by first looking back to the Golden Era of the American music video (Saul Austerlitz), the history of the antecedents of the music video in France (Thomas Schmitt), the close relationship between visual arts and short music films between the 60s and the 80s (Barbara London) and the history of the Italian music video and the awareness and use of this history among contemporary Ital­

ian directors (Bruno di Marino).

This awareness brings us into the present ("Play") where we will have a closer look at the contemporary reception of the music video (Klaus Neumann­Braun and Axel Schmidt), before raising questions concerning the methods in the analysis and interpretation of the music video (Giulia

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Gabrielli, Matthias Wei£). This leads to issues concerning the actual state of the music video as an aesthetic medium (Paolo Peverini, Laura Frahm) and to the problem how to address and tackle this medium properly in the future (Christoph Jacke).

The opening of the music video towards other media­forms (Holger and Cornelia Lund) and protagonists (such as artists making video clips:

Antje Krause­Wahl) brings us to the question about the future ("Fast For­

ward") of the music video: Will YouTube resurrect the music video (Gianni Sibilla, Carol Vernallis) or will it experience completely different transfor­

mations (Christian Jegl and Kathrin Wetzel)?6*

The articles published in this volume, with the exception of Antje Krause­

Wahl's essay, are based on papers given during an international and inter­

disciplinary symposium, which was organized by the editors and held in October 2008 at the Goethe­University Frankfurt/Main.62 The confer­

ence was financially supported by the Volkswagen­Stiftung, the Vereini­

gung von Freunden und Forderern der Goethe­Universitat, the Stiftung zur Forderung der internationalen wissenschaftlichen Beziehungen der Goethe­Universitat, the Fazit­Stiftung and the Mainova. Without their support, this publication would have been impossible, so we would like to thank these institutions once again.

The Richard Stury Stiftung in Munich most generously supported this publication, and we would like to thank its chairman, Dr. Helmut Hefs, as well as Dr. Friederike Wille (Frankfurt/Main); our thanks also go to the Coneda UG (Frankfurt/Main) for its friendly support.

Finally, we would like to thank our translators, Eva Ehninger (Frank­

furt/Main) and Steven Lindberg (Berlin), but especially Anthony Metivier (Berlin) who not only corrected and revised the texts linguistically63, but who also, with his stimulating questions and suggestions, helped to im­

prove them concerning their content.

Henry Keazor/Thorsten Wiibbena, Saarbriicken and Frankfurt/Main, August 2010

Note

The text by Klaus Neumann­Braun and Axel Schmidt has been translated by Henry Keazor, the text by Matthias Weils has been translated by Eva Eh­

ninger, the texts by Laura Frahm and Christoph Jacke have been translated by Steven Lindberg.

HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA R E F E R E N C E S

1 | Liebs 2 0 0 9 : "Die Kunst driickt Stopp- und Rucklauftasten im Lebensfluss:

Sie halt die Zeit an. Sie bietet Reflexion und Riickbesinnung; ein Antidot gegen verlorengegangene Gewissheiten."

2 | See for this also Thompson 2 0 0 9 .

3 | See for this Keazor/Wiibbena 2007: p. 3 1 9 - 3 2 2 .

4 | The title is not only referring to a children's toy, but at the same time to the highly influential track Funky Drummer by James Brown and his band, recorded in 1969, whose drum solo (performed by Clyde Stubblefield) is hailed as one of the most frequently sampled rhythmic breaks in hip hop and popular music, if not even the most sampled recording ever - see for this http://www.webwire.com/

ViewPressRel.asp?ald-16717 (last access 16.3.2010).

5 | See f o r t h i s Keazor/Wtibbena 2 0 0 7 : p. 3 2 3 - 3 2 5 and Keazor/Wiibbena 2 0 0 6 : p. 46.

6 | Gibson 2 0 0 3 , p. 5.

7 | Ibid., p. 7.

8 | See Keazor/Wiibbena 2 0 0 7 : p. 25, note 50.

9 | See his tetralogy The Jane Eyre Affair (2001), Lost In a Good Book (2002), The Well of Lost Plots ( 2 0 0 3 ) and Something Rotten ( 2 0 0 4 ) as well as the sequel First Among Sequels ( 2 0 0 7 ) .

10 | Keazor/Wiibbena 2 0 0 6 : p. 46f.

1 1 | The car in the novel is not only described as a (Fforde 2 0 0 1 : p. 59) "brightly painted sports car", but even its model - (ibid.: p. 88) a " 3 5 6 Speedster" - is specified.

12 | In this case this was due to the fact that the directors of the music video and of the advertisement, the duo Josh (Melnik) and Xander (Charity) were identical:

see for this Keazor/Wiibbena 2 0 0 6 , p. 46-47.

13 | See the TV-spot, designed by the agency Heimat (Berlin), directed by Jacky Oudney (for the production company Telemaz Commercials, Berlin) and released in summer 2 0 0 8 also on h t t p : / / w w w . t i c t a c . d e ("aktuell", "spot 3").

14 | See for this http://en.wikipedia.0rg/wiki/Yes_We_Can#cite_ref-2 (last ac­

cess 16.3.2010). The video inspired spoofs and parodies such as for example the anti­McCain­song john.he.is (see for this the article by Carol Vernallis in this volume, p. 248).

15 | The most recent example here seems to be Roland Emmerich's disaster movie 2012 ( 2 0 0 9 ) : several scenes (such as the car chase through a cityscape, disintegrated by an earthquake) seem to be inspired by the car race and the earthquake­sections in the music video, directed in 2 0 0 2 by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

16 | See for this Keazor/Wiibbena 2 0 0 7 : p. 59, Bovi ( 2 0 0 7 ) , p. 1 1 0 / 1 1 5 and S c a g n e t t i 2 0 1 0 : p. 7 0 / 1 1 4 ­ 1 1 6 .

17 | Keazor/Wiibbena 2 0 0 7 : p. 3 0 2 , note 53.

18 | See for this also the telling title of the article by Phull 2010: "I want my MTV back" which is provoked by the journalist's observation that MTV by now has even dropped the "MusicTelevision" strapline underneath its logo, thus indicatingthat

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it doesn't consider itself anymore as a TV station devoted to broadcasting music.

Phull's reaction: "I was genuinely choked." In his article he reflects upon the pos­

sible impact MTV could still have today, even in the guise of a TV station not de­

voted to music anymore and concludes:"(...) we can only imagine what MTV could still do for someone with discernable talent ­ if it only chose to."

19 | The clip was produced by eStudio.com (a Silicon Valley­based interactive branding and animation company, founded in 1998, among others, by Mark Cohn and Ken Martin. The company did run one of the then first flashsites; in this context eStudio did present (as part of the so­called "regurge"­series) cartoon parodies of music videos such as The Buggies (episode 1), The Back Street Boys (episode 2), Limp Bizkit (episode 3) and Cyndi Lauper (final episode 4). In 2 0 0 2 , the founders of eStudio, Cohn, Martin and Ivan Todorov opened Blitz Digital Stu­

dios, an animation studio and integrated marketing firm, which did supersede eStudio.

20 | Stahli 2010: "Musikfernsehen war gestern. Musikvideos sieht man sich am besten spatabends mit Freunden an, dicht zusammen gedrangt vor dem Compu­

terbildschirm ­ Oder auf der grofien Kinoleinwand."

2 1 | For YouTube in general and its different aspects see Burgess/Green 2 0 0 9 as well as Snickars/Vonderau (2009).

22 | See the fourth episode of the twelfth season of South Park, "Canada on Strike!", first aired on the 2nd of April 2 0 0 8 . Later, somewhat consequently, South Park fans would then also produce a parody of the Weezer­clip with South Park characters singing a new text. See for this the article by Carol Vernallis in this volume, p. 256, note 11.

23 | According to h t t p : / / e n . w i k i p e d i a . o r g / w i k i / P o r k _ a n d _ B e a n s J s o n g ) (last access 16.3.2010) "it reached more than four million viewers in its first week and was that week's most­watched video. It was the most popular video of the month in June, reaching 7.3 million views by June 16, 2 0 0 8 . "

24 | http://www.wirsindhelden.de/news/archive (last access 16.3.2010), un­

der the 2 5 . 0 2 . 2 0 0 8 : " ( . . . ) mehr Wettbewerb mit der Konkurrenz."

25 | http://www.wirsindhelden.de/news/archive (last access 16.3.2010), un­

derthe 2 5 . 0 2 . 2 0 0 8 : "Keine nackten Weiber, keine Hubschrauber [...]."

26 | For a similar concept see the project for the music video for C­Mon & Kyp­

ski's song More is Less, where the visitors of the website http://oneframeoffame.

com are invited to photograph themselves with a webcam while copying the pose from a given frame of already existing footage from the music video. The picture is then uploaded and added to a suited moment of the music video which is thus populated and made with/by the fans and "friends" o f t h e band. Similar (so­called

"audience­based") projects have been started in the meantime for example also in the fashion world: fashion photographer Nick Knight recently did upload raw footage for a promotional film on a website and asked the users to edit a short film out of it by using at least 25 % from the original material while also adding own footage. Out of the submitted films he then did choose usable ideas and incorpo­

rated them into his final advertisement ­ see for this Piepgras 2010, p. 33.

27 | In 2 0 0 8 , the German soap­opera "Marienhof" for example featured in their adverts also a YouTube­player which mimicked a "sweded" style.

HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

2 8 | http://www.director-file.com/gondry/steriograrn.html.

2 9 | See f o r t h i s and its discussion Keazor/Wubbena 2007: p. 248.

3 0 | Hanson 2 0 0 6 : p. 11.

3 1 | See for this also the contributions by Paolo Peverini and Gianni Si b i I la in this volume.

32 | Syyn Lab is a Los Angeles group of creative engineers who joined in 2 0 0 8 with the objective to "twist together art and technology": see http://syynlabs.

c o m / a b o u t (last access 21.3.2010).

33 | The band actually launched two music videos to accompany the song: The first one, directed by Brian L. Perkins and released in January 2010, features a live performance of the song in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame Marching Band, filmed in October 2 0 0 9 . See for this http://en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/This_Too_Shall_Pass_(song) (last access 21.3.2010).

3 4 | Harlow 2010.

3 5 | Ibid.

3 6 | Ibid. Interestingly, the same issue of The Sunday Times in which Harlow's article is published, features also (p. 14: "News Review") a report on the world­

wide success of the music video, shot in March 2010 by Jonas Akerlund for Lady Gaga's Telephone:"(...) it's on its way to become one of the most watched videos of all time." This shows clearly that still different concepts in music videos can be successful: While Akerlund's video relies on the by now almost hackneyed scan­

dal­strategy by stirring media­attention thanks to a recourse to a "all­singing, all­dancing, lesbian­prison­sex and mass­murder"­scenario (so the above men­

tioned report), while being moreover heavily indebted to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), the music video for OK Go instead opts for a more modest and at the same time non­narrative approach. The above stated phrase "If you don't know history, you are doomed to repeat it" applies especially to the case of the music videos for Lada Gaga since almost all of them are more or less spiced­up and stylish rehashes of earlier video clips, especially those made for Madonna and Britney Spears (whose directors Lady Gaga tellingly also took over by hiring for example Francis Lawrence or Jonas Akerlund). Given her succesful drawing­

by­numbers­approach, one would almost wish for the sake of originality that Ste­

fani Joanne Angelina Germanotta alias "Lady Gaga" ­ reportedly being a studied media scientist with a NYU­degree in music ­ will one day expose her career as the mere practical part of a research project on the ways and mechanisms the pop business functions todays.

37 | Already in 2 0 0 5 director Mike Palmieri did conceive his music video for the song An Honest Mistake by the American rock band The Bravery by putting a similar chain reaction (consisting of dominoes and other mundane household objects) into the center of the band's performance.

3 8 | This ­ seemingly natural ­ "working" was, however, in some moments helped by digital post production.

3 9 | See Elsaesser2009.

4 0 | http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Lauf_der_Dinge._(Film) (last access 13.5.2010).

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4 1 | See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg (last access 13.5.2010).

42 | Elsaesser2009, p. 176.

43 | h t t p : / / w w w . t e d . c o m / t a l k s / l a n g / e n g / j a k o b _ t r o l l b a c k _ r e t h i n k s _ t h e _ music_video.html (last access 16.3.2010).

4 4 | Thus, Hanson's book mainly deals with directors who - as interesting as their works might be - are rather developing before invented concepts further instead of actually inventing new techniques, designs and aesthetic strategies.

Tellingly for the historical amnesia reigning in Hanson's book is the fact that the reader never encounters any production or release dates for the presented vid­

eos ­ thus, the (also historical) difference between the (as Hanson p. 14 calls them) "Icons of the Genre" (that is, groundbreaking directors such as Chris Cun­

ningham, Jonathan Glazer, Michel Gondry, Hammer & Tongs and Spike Jonze) and the "Next­generation directors" is more or less blurred. Since Hanson also never displays his criteria for assigning certain directors to this "next generation", it almost seems as if only the technology, used by the directors, would be decisive for him: he presents them (p. 24) under the heading "digital­age music video".

45 | From the album "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" which was re­released in expanded and remastered form in 2 0 0 6 .

46 | So Trollback in his introduction.

47 | For the music video see Vogt 2 0 0 8 and Keazor/Wubbena 2010: 229.

48 | Dolezal 1994: 169: "Es wird nicht mehr (...) fur jede Idiotenkapelle automa­

tisch ein dazu passendes Video produziert."

49 | See for this for example already the title of the book by the Italian historian Paolo Mieli, "La storia ­ le storie" (Milan: Rizzoli 2 0 0 0 ) , where the difference be­

tween one singular historical narrative ("The history") and its manifold counter­

Part ("The histories") is stressed. Carrier (2000), p. 118 reports a suggestion of Paul Barolsky according to whom also "The story of art is really lots and lots of very particular stories."

50 | Keazor/Wubbena 2010: p. 225.

5 1 I See for example the conclusion by Phull (2010): "(...) for the technically savvy, finding or hearing the music they like is no longer a matter of watching television for hours (...) in the hope of hearing a song that appeals to you."

52 | For the Panoram and the Scopitones see Keazor/Wubbena 2007: p. 57­59, Herzog 2 0 0 7 and Scagnetti (2010).

53 | See for this Keazor/Wubbena 2007: p. 57 and Keazor/Wubbena 2010: p.

2 2 3 ­ 2 2 4 .

54 | See f o r t h i s Keazor/Wubbena 2007: p. 6 4 ­ 6 5 .

55 | Nevertheless, Liggeri 2007: p. 53 sees Richard Wagner's concept of a "syn­

thesis of the arts" at the origin of the "synaesthesia" of the music video.

56 | See h t t p : / / w e r n e r n e k e s . d e / 0 0 _ c m s / c m s / f r o n t _ c o n t e n t . p h p ? i d a r t ­ 1 0 1 # Eidophusikon (last access 15.3.2010).

57 | See Mungen 2 0 0 6 , vol. 1: p. 168­175 and Keazor/Wubbena 2010: p. 223.

58 | Middleton/Beebe 2007: p. 6 are still diagnosing an "apparent standstill in the theorization of music video", apparently due to a lack of "new and innovative models for analysis."

HENRY KEAZOR/THORSTEN WUBBENA

59 | Middleton/Beebe 2007: p. 5: "One difficulty in music video studies (...) is the fact that theorists of the visuals are often not trained in musical analysis and perhaps are not even particularly familiar with or interested in popular music itself." See f o r t h i s also the article by Jacke in this volume.

60 | See here also the admonition by Phull 2010 who reminds us of the still prominent role of music TV in other parts of the world: "It should not be forgotten, however, that in the wider world, where people don't have the time to spend hours trawling through trend-setting blogs, or to sit at their laptops downloading MP3s, TV is still a dominant medium." See also the essay by Hayward 2007.

6 1 | Other possible forms, not discussed here, into which the music video could and certainly will diffuse are the fashion film (see for this Piepgras 2010, p. 33) and modern museum displays: The Bach-Museum in Eisenach for example grants their visitors the possibility to "enter" a composition by Johann Sebastian Bach by stepping into a multimedia room where the music is "translated" into immer­

sive visuals. The installation, designed by the director and media­artist Marc Tamschick did win the award of the "Finalist Diploma" during the 2 0 0 8 World Media Festival in Hamburg. See f o r t h i s http://www.tamschick.com ("projects",

"Begehbares Musikstuck").

62 | See http://www.muvikon08.net.

63 | Nevertheless, possible mistakes are not his responsibility.

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