MUSIC VIDEO THEORY #8 /GENRE THEORY #5: Music Video Genres

These are named as the six music video genres: 



None of these can really separated that exactly and strictly, Madonna's Music mixes live action and animation, my video could potentially as well.

1. PERFORMANCE

U2's Beautiful Day
where they go to various locations. 
"Giving their videos a theme" - So this is both a performance and concept video. 



The Strokes's You Only Live Once
The Strokes are a band which nearly only do performance videos.



2. SPECIAL EFFECTS
Chemical Brothers's however that also features dance 

3. STORY
"Where a narrative plays out to the lyrics of the music"
Differentiates between those where the band is in the video and not 

WITH THE ACT


WITHOUT THE ACT
...



4. DANCE
Have other Is still a style of performance.

When does an act stop simple just Performing but also dancing (does Dave Gahan's clapping and moving in I Feel You count as dancing)

A number of Chemical Bro
5. ANIMATION
Just like there are animated films and TV series, there are also animated music videos. Some acts do all of their videos animated, Gorillaz even used it to create different personalities. Some acts do it sometimes like Kasabian, some mix it like Madonna's Music.

And they also tell a story, and have some performance elements.

6. BROWSER
The interactive video that Arcade Fire did?

GENRE RESEARCH #5 - Difference between alternative and indie

Institutions and Audiences Book

Mainstream, Independent and Alternative. You can be independent put still target your media products/texts to a mainstream/commercial audience.

From this article:

...is there actually any validity to a separation between the two? Well, yes and no.
Alternative and indie, at their roots, stand more for vague ideas and beliefs than any kind of specific musical styles of sounds, and truly the only real difference is the location of the artist: alternative was the preferred nomenclature of American artists while indie came straight from the British Isles.

 BRITISH INDIE

Yes, indie is at heart the English expression. In the U.K., indie started out simply as the trade term for records released on independent record labels. In the wake of punkrock in the late 1970s, the do-it-yourself ethos had flowered in England. With labels like Rough Trade, Factory, Mute and Cherry Red all growing in stature, the UK Indie Chart began chronicling the best-selling independently-released singles in 1980.
Yet at some point, the simple classification changed. Many point to the iconic cassette compilation "C86," which was given away with an edition of the English weekly "NME" in 1986. The "album" sought to chronicle a burgeoning English guitar-pop underground called either "cutie" or "shambling" at the time. As these descriptive names suggest, these bands played a twee, amateurish form of home-made music drawing deeply from sunny '60s acts like The Byrds and the Velvet Underground.
Rough Trade recording artists The Smiths were the biggest band in the U.K. at that time. Known as a proudly indie band whose obvious debt to The Byrds contrasted their frontman Morrissey's Oscar Wilde rakish wit, The Smiths unsurprisingly released "C86" to great critical acclaim.
Featuring bands like The Pastels, The Shop Assistants, and Primal Scream, C86became a huge hit, then a buzz-word, then a catch-all.
Sometime thereafter, indie meant being synonymous with this particular style, this particular cassette. Stylistically, this meant a retro-phonic, largely sexless form of music with jangly guitars and the vague taint of nostalgia. Indie no longer referred to the factual realities of record distribution. Indie was somewhere between a state of mind and a singular guitar tone. 

After a quarter-century of sexually-frustrated, bookish boys and block-fringed girls playing proudly indie music labels, you'd think it would've made indie a definable style, if not a singular sound. Yet, as I originally said, this depends on which side of the pond you're on. 

In America, indie often means twee, meek, Anglophilic; and it always means retrophonic. To be indie is to do so without distortion, without aggression. And, given the state of modern American radio, this almost by nature makes indie acts underground bands. In fact, aside from The Shins, I can't think of anyone with a true indie-pop sound who's made a run on the American charts.

Yet, back in England — birthplace of the word — "indie" has come to mean something else entirely. No longer a term used, often proudly, to describe bands with a down-to-earth attitude and do-it-yourself beliefs, indie has come to be shorthand for the direst form of non-rock.
In Britain, these days indie is routinely used as a catch-all to describe an ever-growing succession of impossibly bland, laddish bands playing inoffensive, melancholy ballad-rock. Their kings are Coldplay and Snow Patrol, two outfits of indistinct, fresh-faced fellows who've made a mint by playing soft, jangly songs free from tension and edge and polished up to a modern-FM-radio sheen. But Coldplay and Snow Patrol are the ones you know, the ones who made it outside the British Isles. If you've heard of The Fratellis, The Kooks or Razorlight, you likely live in the United Kingdom. 

applied to Suede:

In a 1995, base player Mat Osman said:

We're just a pop band really. We're not kinda like a cult band, or an alternative band or anything, we just make sort of pop records, records that people like. Nothing very complicated.

...

GENRE THEORY #5 - Abercrombie

From the MANGeR pack:

Suggests that "boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable" and argues that contemporary media is producing a "steady dismantling of genre"

...

GENRE THEORY #4 - Amy J.Devitt

Amy J.Devitt is an English and Rhetorical professor.

She states (Wiki entry on Genre studies)

Scholars generally recognize the restrictions placed on works that have been classified as a certain genre. However, viewing genre as a rhetorical device gives the author and the reader more freedom and "allows for choices." Genres are not free-standing entities, but are actually intimately connected and interactive amongst themselves. Rhetorical genre recognizes that genres are generated by authors, readers, publishers, and the entire array of social forces that act upon a work at every stage of its production.

Comparing with Chandler:

This recognition does not make the taxonomy of texts easy. Chandler points out that very few works have all the characteristics of the genre in which they participate. Also, due to the interrelatedness of genres, none of them is clearly defined at the edges, but rather fade into one another. Genre works to promote organization, but there is no absolute way to classify works, and thus genre is still problematic and its theory still evolving.

Further reading:
http://myweb.fsu.edu/jjm09f/WEPOFall2011/Amy%20J.%20Devitt%20Generalizing%20about%20Genre.pdf

GENRE THEORY #3 - Jason Mittell

Jason Mittell, an professor of American studies and film and media culture, argues that genres: (source: Essay on Cultural Approach To Television Genre Theory )

are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience and cultural practices as well. 

...To summarize, genres have traditionally been treated as textual components. Although genres are categories of texts, texts themselves do not determine, contain, or produce their own categorization. Generic categories are intertextual and hence operate more broadly than within the bounded realm of a media text. Even though texts certainly bear marks that are typical of genres, these textual conven- tions are not what define the genre. Genres exist only through the creation, circu- lation, and reception of texts within cultural contexts. Textual analysis cannot examine media genres as they operate at the categorical level—there are texts that are categorized by genres, but their textual sum does not equal the whole of the genre. Instead, we must separate the practice of analyzing generically labeled texts from analyzing genre as a cultural category. Analyses of generic texts are certainly worthwhile, but they do not explain how genres themselves operate as categories. We thus need to rethink genres in different terms and propose their analysis using different methods. But what is this new approach? 

From the MANGeR pack:

In short, industries use genre to sell products to audiences. Media producers use familiar codes and conventions that often make cultural references to their audience's knowledge of society + other texts. Genre allows audiences to make choices about what products they want to consume through acceptance in order to fulfil a particular pleasure.

This goes well with Barthes's cultural code.

His aforementioned essay goes on to say a lot about music videos in its TV origins/context, looking at Michael Jackson.

GENRE THEORY #2 - Steve Neale's Repetition & Difference

From the MANGeR pack:

It is easy to underplay the differences within a genre. Steve Neale declares that "genres are instances of repetition and difference". He adds that "difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre": mere repetition would not attract an audience.

Further reading:

• https://prezi.com/_z_csnkfywxq/steve-neales-theory-of-repetition-difference/
• https://prezi.com/3ewc87yoxddt/steve-neales-theory-of-repetition-difference/

GENRE RESEARCH #2 - Philipp Tagg's axiomatic triangle

UPDATE, APPLIED TO SUEDE

After two albums of glam and art rock inspired by artists seen in the. My new concept compilation album of a dystopian non-linear narrative is aiming to achieve a balance between being artistically relevant but also attracting a new primary audience, a teenage audience, a younger one. Like biographer David Buckley said about his 1980 album, Scary Monsters, which was released in-between one of his most art for art period and his commercial peak, this achieves "the perfect balance of creativity and mainstream success" (In a way this is also balancing creativity and complying with the examboard for me.)

APPLIED TO BOWIE

David Bowie always wanted to bring in the avant-garde into the mainstream, so he was part of this blurring of the lines between high art and pop culture.
I want to incorporate high art signifiers that he was inspired by, like the novels about, classic Nineteen Eighty-Four (when a novel becomes a classic does it lose a bit of its high art status).

Source: Wikipedia entry on music genre

ART MUSIC

The term art music refers primarily to classical traditions, including both contemporary and historical classical music forms. Art music exists in many parts of the world. It emphasizes formal styles that invite technical and detailed deconstruction^[9] and criticism, and demand focused attention from the listener. In Western practice, art music is considered primarily a written musical tradition,^[10] preserved in some form of music notation rather than being transmitted orally, by rote, or in recordings, as popular and traditional music usually are.^[10][11]Historically, most western art music has been written down using the standard forms of music notation that evolved in Europe, beginning well before the Renaissance and reaching its maturity in the Romantic period. The identity of a "work" or "piece" of art music is usually defined by the notated version rather than by a particular performance, and is primarily associated with the composer rather than the performer (though composers may leave performers with some opportunity for interpretation or improvisation). This is so particularly in the case of western classical music. Art music may include certain forms of jazz, though some feel that jazz is primarily a form of popular music.
Sacred Christian music forms an important part of the classical music tradition and repertoire, but can also be considered to have an identity of its own.^{[citation needed]}

POPULAR MUSIC

The term popular music refers to any musical style accessible to the general public and disseminated by the mass media. Musicologist and popular music specialist Philip Tagg defined the notion in the light of sociocultural and economical aspects:Popular music, unlike art music, is:  

(1) conceived for mass distribution to large and often socioculturally heterogeneous groups of listeners, 

(2) stored and distributed in non-written form 

(3) only possible in an industrial monetary economy where it becomes a commodity 

(4) in capitalist societies, subject to the laws of 'free' enterprise ... it should ideally sell as much as possible.^[8]

Popular music is found on most commercial and public service radio stations, in most commercial music retailers and department stores, and in movie and television soundtracks. It is noted on the Billboard charts and, in addition to singer-songwriters and composers, it involves music producers more than other genres do.The distinction between classical and popular music has sometimes been blurred in marginal areas^[12] such as minimalist music and light classics. Background music for films/movies often draws on both traditions. In this respect, music is like fiction, which likewise draws a distinction between literary fiction and popular fiction that is not always precise.

TRADITIONAL MUSIC 

Traditional music is a modern name for what has been called "folk music", excluding the expansion of the term folk music to include much non-traditional material. Sometimes "folk" is designated for Western music and non-Western music is considered "world music". The two are both unified as traditional music due to:

• Oral transmission: The music is handed down and learned through singing, listening, and sometimes dancing;

• Cultural basis: The music derives from and is part of the traditions of a particular region or culture.

Criticisms

Musicologist and popular music specialist Richard Middleton has discussed the blurred nature of these distinctions:

Neat divisions between 'folk' and 'popular', and 'popular' and 'art', are impossible to find ... arbitrary criteria [are used] to define the complement of 'popular'. 'Art' music, for example, is generally regarded as by nature complex, difficult, demanding; 'popular' music then has to be defined as 'simple', 'accessible', 'facile'. But many pieces commonly thought of as 'art' (Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus', many Schubert songs, many Verdi arias) have qualities of simplicity; conversely, it is by no means obvious that the Sex Pistols' records were 'accessible', Frank Zappa's work 'simple', or Billie Holiday's 'facile'.^[13]

Genre fusions/hybrids like country pop (Dixie Chicks), show that the distinctions are blurring. 

One feature of postmodernism according to Dominic Strinati is the breakdown of the distinction between popular culture and high art, can we still apply these very strong distinctions between pop and art music?

And also is an act limited to be stay in one of these classifications for their whole career? Andrew Goodwin wrote in Dancing In The Distraction Factory about electronic band Depeche Mode: that they: (still need to find exact wording of the quote)

managed to shift from pop to art rock music due to its rebranding of a shift towards darker themes in its music and the new visual look Anton Corbijn gave them through their music videos and promoting photography. 

Ironically one would think that the commercial appeal would sink if they go into a more high art direction, limited to an ABC1 audience. But no, their success grew and grew, also because they still made their lead singles Strangelove, Enjoy The Silence and Personal Jesus ,as Middleton would say, commercially accessible while including many long-drawn, intense and instrumental tracks on the album.

GENRE THEORY #1 - Daniel Chandler

POSSIBLE INFLUENCES:

• ....

Chandler, a British visual semiotician, said that genres: (source: Wiki on Genre Studies)

...create order to simplify the mass of available information. Creating categories promotes organization instead of chaos.

His Introduction To Genre Theory 

Or jump straight into Working Within Genre.

GENRE RESEARCH #1 - What Is Genre?

Etymology: 

(/ˈʒɒ̃rə/, /ˈʒɒnrə/ or /ˈdʒɒnrə/; from French genre [ʒɑ̃ʁ(ə)], "kind" or "sort", from Latin genus (stem gener-), Greek γένος, génos) 

Wikipedia defines genre as:

any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed upon conventions developed over time. Genre is most popularly known as a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones is discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible.
Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, and even actors were restricted to their genre under the assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best. In later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a social state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings.
Genre suffers from the same ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized and to weigh works on their unique merit. It has been suggested that genres resonate with people because of the familiarity, the shorthand communication, as well as the tendency of genres to shift with public mores and to reflect the zeitgeist. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, admiration has grown. Proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes.

Oxford Dictionary 

(Click read more below to see more example sentences from Oxford.)

Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus:

1. kind, category or sort, esp. of literature or artistic work.
2. a) a category of painting in which incidents from everyday life are depicted                  b) (as modifier): genre painting

Dictionary of Media Studies:

A term that refers to a type of media product or a work of art. 

SOME RESOURCES:

• Key Concepts Research into Genre by Wordpress Blogger Rachael

Now for some theorists... soon to come!