For this week we had to read an excerpt from “Experiencing Music Video” by Carol Varnallis. Personally I found this reading quite difficult to follow as it was quite dense and used an excessive amount of examples.

However, what I did gather was that it reflected on narrative and how some music videos are narrative while others are more abstract and almost void of story. For example Crazy by Aerosmith is a song which has a strong narrative throughout the music video and develops a plot. The audience follows two teen girls as they go on a wild adventure. Where instead in Madonnas Cherish the narrative simply comprises of various moments which are to be enjoyed by the viewer. However there is also a third type of video which is Non narrative, to see if I understood it correctly im going to use the example of Swagger by Sweets (Im basically putting my life on the line here, because the video was directed by my tutor Rohan). Basically in this video there are a series of different shots, without there actually being a story that flows through it. This could technically be considered a Non Narrative. There can be a theme, which could technically be considered an umbrella narrative, however there are no plots or subplots like in the above videos.

These are just some of my thoughts after reading the chapter. It really left me wondering if its possible to categorize the types of music videos. And if possible, what those categories would be:

  1. Narrative, clear – Crazy by Aerosmith
  2. Narrative abstract – Headhunter by Front 242
  3. Semi Narrative – Cherish by Madonna
  4. Non Narrative – Swagger by Sweets
  5. What Even is Life – Gangnam Style (I guess thats why it was so successful)