[Research] Andrew Goodwin's Theory

One of the first theories we learned in our A2 Media Studies course was from the book written by Andrew Goodwin, called ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’. His main argument was that traditional narrative analyses can’t be applied to music videos due to three main factors:

1.)    Music videos are based on songs, which don’t usually have a traditional narrative structure

2.)    In music videos the artist can be both the narrator and a character

3.)    Artists look directly in the camera, to make the viewer feel more involved. This is rarely done in conventional broadcast

 He also claimed that the intertextuality between music videos of the same genre cause us (the audience) to form certain expectations of the particular genre due to those recognisable features: in hip hop or heavy metal videos women are often presented as objects of male desire, and songs written for particular movies often incorporate clips/images from the actual movie 

Music video endings – either builds to a climax or to a constant repetition before fading away

There are three types of relations between songs and videos:

1.)    Illustration – literally tells the story of the song; dance can be used to illustrate moods

2.)    Amplification – when the video of a song introduces new elements which add to its layers of meaning, but don’t contradict the lyrics

3.)    Disjuncture – little connection between lyrics and video