Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Pat Benatar - Love is a Battlefield
The best way to support the idea that a music video is indeed a short film is to look at the typical structure of the video in correlation with the audio. While is seems form that most music videos include the artist singing their own song, many also include a parallel story that, while it may relate to the theme of the song, may have no direct connection to the words being sung.
An excellent example of this is in Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield.” The song is about the how hard love can be. The music video, however, is about a girl who leaves her family behind because of their close-mindedness (we are left to infer). This story has its own narrative structure. The girl leaves home. Then we see her living life the way she wants, but uneasy with her past. She writes letters to her brother who she left at home. We also see her father, who told her never to come back, seeming to regret his decision. The end is left inconclusive. As she walks away, we are left to believe that she is living with the decisions she has made.
The entire story we get simply from the visuals (and the few lines of dialogue added). It then becomes completely separate from the song itself. It is as if the film could stand on its own. The song supports the message, but the film does not rely on the song to exist.
We had talked about in class the sort of grammar that exists in film. For instance, we are okay with the voiceover in trailers because we come to expect this convention. I think that the singing artist in the music video is also a sort of grammar that we come to expect. Interestingly enough, when people watch musicals, many cannot get past the fact that a character bursts into song, and everyone around them magically knows the song as well and they all dance together in perfect accord. We hear this criticism all the time. However, when it comes to the music video, this phenomenon seems lost on people. You never hear anyone question, in a video such as this where there is a story happening, why this character (the artist has become a character in the film) breaks into song, and is part of a random group of dancing people. It seems that we have accustomed ourselves to the formula of the music video, and we can suspend our disbelief.
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11 comments:
I agree. This is part of fantasy which you seem to understand. Although sometimes you wonder if it is a neccessary fantasy.
Now I think about many music videos I've seen in the past, they are just so ridiculous. But I never questioned about it before...
I think its a really interesting observation you make about how we accept certain things in music videos but find the same things silly or ridiculous in musicals. I has never really thought of that before
I think the reason that we may view musicals and music videos differently is because we are expecting to get different things out of it. When we watch a musical, we are there primarily for the story. We want to see a play and the music just adds to our enjoyment of the play. When we watch a music video, though, we want to hear the song. Any accompanying visuals are just extra.
I'll be honest, my enjoyment of the piece was significantly marred by Pat Benetar.
The idea of intention was brought up here and I think it deserves a little more thought. We struggled in class this semester to qualify films without using intention of the filmmaker. This is something you may never be able to know and therefore we cannot you it. However, we never touched on intention of the viewer. I had compared the music video to the musical, and I liked the comment that said that the viewer's intention in watching a piece determined the perceived outcome. Do we accept certain things are prescribed simply because we go into something with a formula of what to expect?
yeah i agree with christine's comment that intention is important. if i'm going to watch a music video, its probably cause i want to hear the song. i don't really care about the story of the video. the same is true the other way around. if im going to watch a musical, i probably am interested in the story and will suffer through the music
I do think that you need to take into consideration the technology. Before all the techniques you discussed were not perfected, now a voice over looks like the real deal. Not to mention, it was the 80s so standards were never set too high...now R Kelly trapped in the closet, that is a music video to discuss.
You mentioned something at the end of the posting about the suspension of disbelief. I think that is exactly why it works. In watching a music video, we know the kind of "fantasy" world we are going to enter, and can accept it. When we are blindsided by this fantasy, which seems to happen in musicals, it is hard to accept it in the same way. I never thought about it before tho. I hope you didn't ruin musicals for me tho christine. damn you.
chris, you said that you thought the video could be separated from the song and stand alone. I think I disagree here. I know what you mean, and in some cases it is probably true. Here though, the song is integral to understanding the plot. without the song, the video would just be a series of images that we couldn't decipher.
I never thought of a music video being a type of short film. Very interesting C!
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