This is not just a book on music video, but rather on the recent changes in audiovisual aesthetics and its relation to music. This is the way Carol Vernallis approaches the new audiovisual phenomena that emerged in the digital age, a set of ‘unruly media’ that dissolved the barriers of genre definitions and gave rise to a complex panorama of interrelated texts that arose from the new practices of ‘prosumers’ on the internet and from a new audiovisual aesthetic.
This book is divided in three main parts that aim to give a wide overview of the processes that are taking place nowadays; each part is dedicated to a different audiovisual medium (i.e. new digital cinema, YouTube and music video), but all three are closely connected.
Vernallis begins by reflecting on the progressive convergence of audiovisual media and technology since the early years of the 21st century, and by highlighting the relevance of 1980s’ music video in this process as ‘the laboratory’ (p. 5) for the current audiovisual aesthetics, as most contemporary filmmakers used to watch and direct music videos at that time. Moreover, the profile of contemporary directors is much more heterogeneous nowadays, and they usually work across movies, music videos and advertisements, contributing to the interaction of audiovisual genres. She argues, as demonstrated in her previous book (Experiencing Music Video, 2004), that music video is a ‘musical genre’ (p. 36), and so music is playing a key role in the development of the new audiovisual aesthetics. The new panorama is defined by Vernallis as fluid, flexible, heterogeneous – to which we could also add ‘liquid’, in Bauman's terms – and it mirrors the way modern societies use media and technologies.
The author approaches first the new digital cinema in order to explain some of the characteristics of the current intensified audiovisual aesthetics. She identifies a list of intensified parameters in films, such as shifts in narrative structure, camera movements, multitemporalities, post-production and edition, sound effects, etc. Vernallis discusses the arguments of David Bordwell and Marco Calavita to explain the audiovisual turn of contemporary post-classical cinema; she diminishes the impact of European art cinema and non-Hollywood American cinema, and emphasises the influence of music video in the new digital cinema. In this sense, ‘post-classical films employ pop songs to increase revenue streams’ (p. 8) and develop new narratives incorporating musical structures. Vernallis demonstrates her arguments with a detailed analysis of two films that fit in the category of new digital cinema: Moulin Rouge and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
One of the key processes in the digital turn is what Vernallis calls the ‘YouTube-ification’ of audiovisual media, that is, the convergence of all kinds of audiovisual genres (films, advertisements, trailers, music videos) in websites such as YouTube. This process not only affects the features of traditional genres, but it also facilitates the emergence of new phenomena, such as ‘Badgers badgers’, that do not fit into any existing category. According to Vernallis, we can talk of ‘YouTube aesthetics’ to explain the new characteristics of audiovisual production. She identifies a complete list of parameters related to both formal elements, such as pulse and reiteration or scale and graphic values, and consuming (and presuming) practices, such as intermediality, parody response or intertextuality – offering examples that illustrate her arguments in each category. Vernallis also offers deep analysis of these phenomena by analysing two different case studies that had a significant impact on YouTube: the virality of Obama's ‘Yes We Can’ campaign video and the paradigmatic YouTube music video ‘Video Phone’ by Beyoncé. Not surprisingly, some of the parameters of the YouTube aesthetics are related to the formal characteristics of music and the way people commonly consume it.
Even if music video is constantly present throughout the whole book, it is in the third part where the author focuses on the current characteristics of this audiovisual genre. Vernallis argues that contemporary music videos respond to a ‘second aesthetics’ closely connected to the new broadcasting platforms on the internet, some kind of second era of music video that differs from ‘MTV style’, which was associated with television and 1980s mainstream pop. Thus, it is necessary to update the methodologies to analyse contemporary music videos in the new context, and even if some of the concepts used in traditional music video analysis may be useful, we need to pay attention to the new parameters that characterise the second aesthetics of the genre.
Vernallis compares the two eras of music video, attending to duration, contents, use of technology, materiality and colour of the image – and highlighting the main features of the new aesthetics. Once again, the music seems to be a significant part of the aesthetic turn of music video; the strongly demarcated verse-chorus alternation in the 1980s yielded to different structures, ‘more cellular and fragmented’ (p. 220), like in Lady Gaga's ‘Telephone’, or layering textures ‘that have long been a staple of electronic dance music’ (p. 232), like in Kate Perry's ‘Teenage Dream’. These structures facilitate new narratives and microrhythms in the image that define the second aesthetics of music video.
Although music video directors have never been as widely recognised as filmmakers, and YouTube dynamics seem not to be favourable and reliable for author recognition, Vernallis is concerned with the analysis of director's style in music video by analysing how a particular author approaches songs, moves the camera, works with characters, etc. As an example, she analyses the work of Dave Meyers and Francis Lawrence. In recent years, music video also experienced a process of canonisation, and several music video directors, such as Gondry, Cunningham, Jonze or Romanek, have been recognised in a DVD collection edited by Palm Pictures. Vernallis problematises the existence of a white genre and male canon that privilege high-art aspirations in music video production.
This book is an illuminating work for the study of music in contemporary audiovisual aesthetics. It offers the possibility for different disciplines approaching several audiovisual genres and understanding their interrelations in the new digital context and the evolution of the audiovisual panorama in the last decades. In the afterword, Vernallis connects the new audiovisual aesthetics with the contemporary Zeitgeist of modern societies, stating that ‘these new forms bear some similarities to contemporary experiences like work speedup, multitasking, and just-in-time labor’ (p. 277). Thus, studying the way we use audiovisual media may contribute to understanding our behaviour in everyday life.
