Theorists of music videosBy Jack Swingler and Zoe McGhee

Sven E Carlsson

Sven E Carlsson's theory is that binary oppositions drive the narration of the music video forward, e.g film noir.

Also that there are two main types of music video; performance and conceptual. Performance clips where the video mainly shows an artist (or artists) singing and/or dancing.

Conceptual clips are where something else is shown during the song's duration which may have symbolism or an artistic meaning.

Performance Clip

There are three main types of performance clip; song performance, dance performance and instrumental performance. A way of telling if a music video is a performance clip is that the artist is likely to be shown in more than one setting.

A Conceptual video focuses elsewhere such as on a story or conveying a mood across to the audience and is often produces the more artistic and creative music videos of the two.

These are can be more appealing to audiences to watch as they tend to be more entertaining and interesting to watch, as opposed to 3 minutes of the artist lip syncing.

Michael Shore

Michael Shore concludes that music video are recycled styles that contains an information overload and therefore contains views of adolescent male fantasies. Most videos contain elements of speed, power, girls and wealth. All this conveys into soft-core pornography with clichéd imagery.

Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin says that these theoretical conclusions are the basis of understanding music videos.Cinematic genreAdvertising New forms of television Visual art“Electronic Wallpaper”DreamsPost-Modern PoetryMetaphysical Poetry“Semiotic Pornography”