Research and Planning: Music Video Research Extension

Andrew Goodwin is just one of the theorists that have come up with concepts on how we can catorgorise music videos. There are other theorists that have different ideas on how we can do this. One other theorist could be Sven E Carlson. Carlson belived we can catorgise the artists in music videos into three mythical groups, this is called "Modern Mythic Embodiment".

 The group first being 'the commerical exhibitionist'. This is when the performer or artist is no longer made to look like a performer in the video, instead they sell their body image and appereance, personal life; everything to be in the spotlight. This kind of artist wants to be 'a star', famous and will do pretty much anything to get that celebrity status. An example of a current star who uses this technique to become sucessful is Shakira. She is known for her belly dancing skills and also her skimpy outfits in her videos; which is evident in one of her most recent videos 'She Wolf'. Her sexualised apperance in this video has gained her over 54 million views on Youtube. It's a sterotypical view that 'sex sells' however it proves to be true in this instance.





The second group for artists is the 'Televised bard'. Artists in this category use on images other than themselves in videos to create a narrative and they are just the singer of the lyrics. Sometimes the artist is in the video to but not included in the narrative, and other times the artist is not at all. An example of an artist that is a 'Televised bard' would be Ed Sheeran in his 'You Need Me, I Don't Need You' music video.

This video only uses this dancer who signs the lyrics through th whole song, we only see the singer Ed Sheeran at the end of the video very briefly, this could be because Ed Sheeran is a fairly new artist; if people hear the track and like it they probably would want to see what the artist looks like. That way the audience would then be able to identify the artist, because of this way of advertising and hence aid sales.

The third group of artists is the 'Electronic Shaman' this is essentialey a mix of the two above. It is similar to Andrew Goowdin's theory of amplified videos. Carlson believes that the 'Electronic Shaman' creates a video with a underlying meaning and creates a persona to match that, something odd, mystical or not typical to the song. This persona created links the lyrics and video together to produce something new and original, which will keep viewers hooked. 

An example of this type of video would be The Black Eyed Peas 'Meet Me Halfway' music video. The song is about meeting someone halfway the video shows each singer on a journey in a mystical land to meet each other. Each singer gets screen time in the video creating the star persona, but equally the amplified narrative is original and new which balances the two out, creating a sucessful and popular new music video.