TH: “Music videos are simply a tool for promoting an artist?”

“Music videos are simply a tool for promoting an artist?” With reference to two music videos, how far do you agree with the statement?

• Due to technological improvements and the introduction it is much easier to create a relationship between artist and fan, this can be done in music videos through parasocial intimacy. An example of this is ‘Baby One More Time’ (Britney Spears, 2003) where the artist uses the 1^st person mode of address to communicate with the audience and create a relationship therefore making her more commercial to the materialistic modern audience. Whereas ‘Trying To Be Cool’ (Phoenix, 2013) has a sense of disjuncture and this means that it is polysemic and can create narrative fuzz, allowing the audience to decide the outcome. Andrew Goodwin believed in order to promote an artist you must target an audience, this is making the video conventional of a genre. This can be done by some particular genre characteristics, for example ‘Baby One More Time’ targeted a large audience and this is because it had characteristics of the Pop genre. For example the artist seems to be both glamorous and personal, and this creates a relationship in the mind of the audience with the star, and this is done through awe. Whereas ‘Trying To Be Cool’ is conventional of the Indie genre as it is supposed to be an art form where it doesn’t necessarily make sense or have meaning. Therefore despite being entirely different videos and genres, they are both conventional of their genre.                                                 
• Barthes theory was an idea whereby there is now an ‘active audience’ who will interpret the text in a variety of ways and the five narrative codes allows them to do this. These codes fit together through structuralism and they include; enigma codes; action codes; symbolic codes; semantic codes; cultural codes. Together they create the narrative; they also allow the audience to analyse in different ways through polysemics. In ‘Baby One more Time’ there are several codes that create ideas an example being a semantic code, in which we as an audience have a developed understanding of the artist through the mise en scene used. Another example is the enigma code as despite the audience feeling as though they have a relationship with the artist she is still mysterious and our opinions of her could drastically change as seconds go by. Whereas in ‘Trying To Be Cool’ has many different types of codes, for example the countdown which is repetitive throughout symbolises that we only have a certain amount of time and we often spend this trying to mould ourselves into being ‘cool’.                                                                                                                             
• Richard Dyer is a theorist who developed the concepts of stars. He said that stars must be both simultaneously present and absent, as well as simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. This makes them more commercial to the audience as we can empathise with them. For example the stars are often shown to be perfect through lighting and effects, however subsidiary media will relate them to the audience through magazines, newspapers, etc. Furthermore within the video the star must appear repeatedly, an example being Britney Spears in ‘Baby One More Time’ however the viewer will never get the chance to actually meet them in real life. On the contrary when analysing ‘Trying To Be Cool’ because it is of the Indie genre and does not have as large of a following as Pop, the star is presented in a slightly more normal yet abnormal way. We can see this in the video as the lead singer only appears a couple of times and stays mysterious to the audience throughout.                                   
• In the case of Britney Spears she is represented as a commodity in which the audience must buy into, as they are only to increase in value. Particularly in ‘Baby One More Time’, she is presented for the male gaze in order to attract a larger following. However Phoenix is much different and the indie following do not look for perfection, they look for authenticity and this is what is presented in the video. As there is little meaning in the video but as an art form it is visual capturing.                                                                                               
•  Finally there is a residual ideology in ‘Baby One More Time’ and this is that women are inferior and simply a materialistic object for males. This is to create a male gaze upon the star, despite this being a residual ideology it is to make the star seem more commercial and more significant for a mass audience. Whereas Phoenix don’t have much of an ideological discourse, simply because of disjuncture and narrative fuzz.