I’ve admitted before that I am not fond of the medium of “music video”. I have observed it from its infancy; I lucked out and happened to be present when MTV started broadcasting in summer of 1981. If you enjoy being awkwardly sung to by a band, or like to be teased with sleazy, half-naked sluts, MTV was your White Knight, bubby.
Everyone wants to break into the movies, so it’s easy for a coked-up director to cajole an otherwise sensible group into painful, cringe-worthy antics. Then another director would react by crafting the most pretentious, arthouse video possible, all long takes and black-and-white aesthetics. “They’re like mini-movies,” say the line-toers, ignoring that music videos typically appropriate and condense everything meaningful about film. Some people will say anything to promote their clients.
But like Tijuana Bibles and Bumfight videos, there is still a vein of good under mountains of terrible. For every ten thousand glamor-shot videos of the latest solipsistic pop bimbo, there is one that reminds you why the medium exists in the first place. Maybe it’s not merely a quick-and-dirty promotional tool; it is like a “mini-movie”.
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