Monopoly Television

Mtv's Quest To Control The Music

Jack Banks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367316914
• eBook ISBN: 9780429978470
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this book, Jack Banks examines the historical development of music video as a commodity and analyzes the  existing structures within which music video is produced, distributed, and exhibited on its premier music channel, MTV.  }In August 1981, Music Televisionnow popularly known as MTVwas launched. Within a matter of years it revitalized a struggling record industry; made the careers of leading pop stars like Madonna, Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, and Duran Duran; infiltrated traditional network television and the movie industry; revolutionized the advertising industry; and stimulated purchases in several markets, most notably fashion apparel. The reach of MTV has proven long and profitable. In this book, Jack Banks examines the historical development of music  video as a commodity and analyzes the existing structures within which music video is produced, distributed, and exhibited on its premier music channel, MTV. Who controls MTV? What part do record companies  play in the financing and production of music video? How do  the power brokers in the business affect the ideological content of music video? Given the tight sphere of influence within the music industry, what are the future trends for music video and for artistic freedom of expression? Banks tackles these questions in an intelligent, lively, and sophisticated investigation into one of the most influential media enterprises of our society. }

1
Constructing Video Dreams: Music Video in a Commercial Culture

MTV: Music Television was launched in August 1981 as a twenty-four-hour cable program service presenting an endless stream of music videos, short visual productions featuring current pop and rock songs. As MTV's popularity increased throughout the decade, music video had a pronounced impact on popular culture in the United States, influencing most major media and stimulating demand for a wide range of consumer products. In the early 1980s, music video revitalized a troubled record industry by prompting renewed consumer interest in pop music and successfully developing several new recording acts such as Madonna, Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, and Duran Duran, who adeptly showcased their provocative visual images in this new media form. Music video has since become an indispensable means of promotion for recording artists, who are expected to have accompanying videos for their songs in order to become commercially successful.

MTV's influence gradually infiltrated traditional television shows on the commercial broadcast networks. Miami Vice (originally titled MTV Cops by network executives) prominently featured current pop music and adopted the flashy visual style of music videos. Even some network television news shows like 48 Hours regularly presented stories that incorporated the pulsing music and frenetic editing characteristic of music clips.¹ Music video pervades theatrical films as well. Many motion pictures include musical segments that are self-contained music clips regularly excerpted from the film and played on MTV, whereas other music-oriented films like Flashdance and Purple Rain from the 1980s were described as extended music videos. Music clips featuring songs from a movie soundtrack and film excerpts that are played on MTV and other television shows have become an effective advertisement for current theatrical releases. As MTV and music video demonstrated their promotional efficacy, the advertising industry borrowed heavily from this cultural form to enhance the sales appeal of commercials.² Many commercials imitate visual techniques used in popular music videos and often are presented as ersatz music clips complete with dance routines and throbbing music. Beyond its influence on various media, music video also stimulated consumer purchases in several markets, most notably in fashion apparel. MTV and music videos frequently establish fashion trends by showcasing in music clips the avant-garde clothing worn by performers, which provides a shopping guide for style-conscious consumers. MTV's reach extended into the realm of politics with its extensive coverage of the 1992 presidential campaign, which included interviews with prominent candidates including Bill Clinton.

The considerable impact of MTV and music video on American popular culture make this new media form a pertinent object of inquiry. This book examines the historical development of music video as a commodity and the established structure for the production, distribution, and exhibition of music video with special emphasis on the premiere music channel, MTV. This historical and political economic analysis of the music video industry was prompted by the quite limited scholarly research of music video from this perspective. Most research on music video is some variant of textual analysis. Quantitative empirical research in the field of communications is preoccupied with content analysis of various aspects of music videos like the portrayal of sex and violence in music clips, whereas cultural studies research emphasizes ideological analyses of music clips. These two types of textual analysis are drawn from academic areas that adopt quite different theoretical assumptions and research methodologies. Mainstream empirical research professes to be atheoretical, is grounded in positivist epistemology, and relies on the methodologies of survey and content analysis. Conversely, critical research on music video from a cultural studies perspective is explicitly theoretical, is grounded in a hermeneutic epistemology, and uses a range of methodologies including semiotics, psychoanalysis, and literary analysis. In the sections that follow, I will review representative studies to illustrate the primary observations and arguments made about music video from each tradition.

Quantitative Empirical Studies

Quantitative empirical studies often examine the gender and race of characters depicted in music videos and their attributes. Several such studies say that clips on MTV strongly feature white male characters at the expense of women and minorities, who are underrepresented. Jane Brown and Kenneth Campbell report that 83 percent of all videos played on MTV during a two-day sample period in February 1984 featured white male singers or bandleaders.³ White female singers or bandleaders were present in 11 percent of videos, and nonwhite singers or bandleaders of either sex accounted for only 5 percent of videos. They conclude that "white men, primarily by virtue of their greater numbers, are the center of attention and power" in music video, whereas "women and blacks are rarely important enough to be a part of the foreground."⁴ Steven Seidman's review of MTV clips in February 1987 describes a similar pattern: Sixty-four percent of primary characters in the clips were male and 36 percent were female. Where race was the measure, 89 percent were white, dwarfing the 11 percent nonwhite characters.⁵ The portrayal of minority groups probably increased somewhat in the early 1990s as MTV featured more rap music. Nancy Signorielli, Douglas McLeod, and Elaine Healy report that this composition extends to commercials on MTV. In ads on MTV examined in November 1991, 95 percent of characters were white, and males appeared somewhat more often than females, 54.4 percent to 45.6 percent respectively.⁶

White men are not only portrayed more frequently on MTV but in a more desirable manner, whereas women and minorities are represented as having derogatory, unflattering attributes. Women are depicted as sex objects in music clips more often than men, Barry Sherman and Joseph Dominick report that one-half of the women in music clips wore "provocative clothing" and only one-tenth of men were so dressed.⁷ Signorielli et al. add that women in commercials on MTV were also dressed in skimpy clothing, but male characters almost always wore sexually neutral apparel. Music clips also depict women as submissive to men. Richard Vincent, Dennis Davis, and Lilly Ann Boruszkowski say that women were "put down" and "kept in place" by male characters in three-fourths of the music programs surveyed.⁸ Seidman reports that music clips on MTV provide a caricature of traditional personality attributes for genders, where men are portrayed as more aggressive, domineering, and violent and women are more affectionate, dependent, and fearful. Music videos on MTV reinforce crude gender stereotypes for occupations as well. Men are almost always portrayed working in jobs that are stereotyped for males like firefighter, mechanic, and doctor. Men on MTV videos account for 94 percent of police officers and 90 percent of business executives. Seidman points out that this depiction distorts reality since women are employed in much higher proportions in many of these fields. Women are banished to occupations typecast for their gender like cheerleader, secretary, and librarian. All fashion models and telephone operators on the channel's music clips were portrayed by women. Racial minorities are similarly stereotyped into certain professions. Ninety-five percent of all nonwhite characters were lumped into six occupational categories, prominently including athletes, dancers, and entertainers.

Empirical studies also examine the portrayal of violence and sexual behavior in music videos because of public concern about this type of program content. Sherman and Dominick conducted a content analysis of music clips presented on three popular music video shows including MTV for two hours on Saturday mornings for a seven-week period, reporting that the depiction of sex in music videos was "more implied than overt."⁹ Over half of all incidents of sexual behavior consisted of "flirtation and non-intimate touching," whereas "intimate touching" including caressing and stroking composed about 20 percent of sex depicted in music clips.¹⁰ They conclude that the provocative appearance of half of the women present in music clips demonstrates the male orientation of this medium.

Sherman and Dominick report portrayals of violence in 56.5 percent of "concept" videos, productions that visualize a story or abstract theme, and an average of 2.86 aggressive acts present in videos with violence.¹¹ The authors say that the violence in music clips is comparable to traditional commercial television, noting George Gerbner's finding that 75 percent of prime-time television shows contain violent acts. Men committed almost three-fourths of the aggressive actions and constituted a slightly greater percentage of victims. About 90 percent of the aggressors and victims in these music videos were white. Brown and Campbell report that the white primary characters in music videos accounted for more than half of the observed antisocial behavior, including bodily assaults, physical threats, and verbal aggression.¹² Black characters were much less likely to be involved in such behavior, with black females least likely to be either aggressors or victims.¹³

Behavioralist communication research explores the potential effects of music video on the cognitive activity of young viewers. On the basis of a survey of college students, Rebecca Rubin et al. conclude that a person's "cognitive involvement" with music is greater when viewing video music than when simply listening to the audio version of a song on the radio or cassette player.¹⁴ Conversely, Dean Abt worries that music videos "rob the imagination" of young people by offering preformed visual interpretations of popular songs.¹⁵ Se-Wen Sun and James Lull's study of the viewing habits of high school students in San Jose, California, reports that the 80 percent of the participants who identified themselves as MTV viewers watched the channel an average of over two hours each day.¹⁶ The authors conclude: "Young people watch an enormous amount of music video programming and they seem to enthusiastically accept the visual interpretations of songs that are provided, rather than create their own interpretations."¹⁷ However, Sun and Lull note that adolescents are not passive viewers because their strong feelings about the music and artists likely influence their viewing experience.

Cultural Studies

Music Video as Consumer Culture

Cultural studies examine music video as an artifact of consumer culture. Ann Kaplan argues that rock promos is a more appropriate term for music videos because these productions are primarily advertisements commissioned by record companies to promote their artists.¹⁸ She describes MTV as a continuous advertisement since all of MTV's programming consists of some form of commercial. Richard Gehr concurs, saying, "We refer to most TV as 'commercial'," but "only MTV can lay claim to that title because that is precisely what it is: ersatz commercials punctuated by 'real' ones."¹⁹ Pat Aufderheide examines how music videos dissolve the traditional boundary between programs and commercials since music clips constitute both types of content.²⁰ Kaplan argues music video's dual role as advertisement and art encourages a perpetual conflict about the appropriate content of these productions.²¹ Those involved in the production of music videos, including the musician, producer, and director, want to create an artistic work, but the record companies and MTV consider a music clip solely as a commercial to sell certain commodities, including itself.

Although video clips are made to sell compact discs and tapes, the promotional function of music video and MTV is much broader than being a simple advertisement for recorded music. Margaret Morse explains that rock video promotes a concept that can be used to sell a wide range of products:

This concept can be used not only to promote (a) album and audio tape sales, but also (b) video tapes of itself, (c) the image of a rock star, (d) box-office and video tape sales of movies as well as soundtrack albums, and (e) products and services related not just to the music and performers, but also to the life-styles and world-view depicted in the visuals of the rock video.²²

The most encompassing promotional objective served by music video and MTV is to advocate the viewer's embrace of consumerism as a way of life. Despite MTV's rebellious, irreverent image, Virginia Fry and Donald Fry argue that the program service promotes adherence to consumerism by presenting various cultural styles with associated products that the viewer is enticed to purchase.²³ The visual images of music videos serve as "markers" that position featured artists within a certain "stylistic community" with its own unique apparel and accessories.²⁴ The viewer can become a member of a desired style group like rap or grunge by purchasing the consumer products displayed in the music videos associated with a particular community. Fry and Fry say that young viewers develop their sense of self-identity through the acquisition of these goods providing group affiliation, and Aufderheide adds that the promotion of a personal identity that can be purchased is a primary function of rock videos.

Music video promotes consumerism through forms of emotional manipulation practiced in traditional advertising. Aufderheide explains that music clips cultivate certain mood states such as anxiety or dread, creating a sense of incompletion and lack that can be satisfied through the purchase of products displayed in the video. MTV as a program service also stimulates consumption through appeals to unrequited desire, according to Kaplan: "It evokes a kind of hypnotic trance in which the spectator is suspended in a state of unsatisfied desire but forever under the illusion of imminent satisfaction through some kind of purchase. This desire is displaced onto the record that will embody the star's magnetism and fascination."²⁵ Music video encourages the viewer to associate the purchase of consumer products featured in the clips with desirable emotions and values. Aufderheide says music video "equates the product with an experience to be shared, part of a wondrous leisure world,"²⁶ whereas Morse claims that music clips provide a magical link between featured commodities and the mythical values of rock culture, including creativity and self-determination.²⁷ Music video provides young viewers with the opportunity to "buy the illusion of freedom," says John Fiske.²⁸

Although video music is a form of advertisement, Morse and Aufderheide maintain that music clips differ from traditional commercials. Although conventional advertisements offer the promise of a Utopian paradise free of desire that can be obtained by buying a specific commodity, Morse says that videos p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Constructing Video Dreams: Music Video in a Commercial Culture
• PART ONE THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE MUSIC VIDEO BUSINESS
• PART TWO THE STRUCTURE OF THE MUSIC VIDEO BUSINESS: FORCES THAT SHAPE MUSIC CLIPS
• Notes
• References
• About the Book and Author
• Index