Popular music reaction videos: Reactivity, creator labor, and the performance of listening online

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482091854
Author(s):  
Byrd McDaniel

In popular music reaction videos, performers on YouTube—called “creators”—record their reactions to popular music, filming themselves as they listen to music recordings and watch music videos. The profitability and appeal of popular music reaction videos can be explained by a quality I call reactivity. Reactivity describes the approach that creators take to listening, as they heighten and exaggerate their affective experience of music media. Reactivity also describes their goals for creating these reaction videos, which they hope will provoke subsequent reactions among viewers. Reactions among their viewers translate into more views, shares, and ultimately more power for the creators. By drawing on observations and interviews with nine creators, I demonstrate how reactivity can enable creators of color and queer creators to counter problematic and dominant forms of listening to popular music, while also enabling privileged creators to treat exploitative listening as a kind of virtuosic act of consumption.

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-117
Author(s):  
Christine Capetola

In 1986, Janet Jackson forever changed the direction of pop music and its music videos with the release of her third and breakthrough album, Control. Working with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, choreographer Paula Abdul, and director Mary Lambert, Jackson created songs and videos that conveyed a new kind of feminist affect that intertwined individual stories of endurance, the forcefulness of relatively new digital music technology, and Black and female collectivity. In this article, I chart how Jackson transmitted this feminist affect through what I call hyperaurality, or sounds and vibrations that work in excess of the limitations of visual representation. Through tracing the affective excesses of Jackson’s visuals, sounds, and movements, I unpack how hyperaurality both intensifies and reintegrates the senses of sight, hearing, and feeling. In the process, I posit that vibration, or sound’s materially felt oscillations, works as a point of connection across these three aspects of hyperaurality. By demonstrating its connective power, I assert that vibration is a source of affective politics within popular music, one with the power of repurposing capitalism's excesses.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-106
Author(s):  
Lisa Perrott

Once appearing to function primarily as a commercial tool for popular entertainment, the popular form of music video has recently been exposed by scholars as formally and functionally diverse, with a rich history stretching back decades before the advent of MTV. Animated music videos owe much to centuries old traditions spanning the visual, musical and performing arts, providing performative and material models that inspire contemporary video directors. Experimental animation, surrealism and music video form a matrix of historical and contemporary significance; however, few scholars have undertaken close examinations of the relations between them. John Richardson and Mathias Korsgaard show how music video directors have employed surrealist compositional strategies together with experimental animation methods, thus giving rise to challenging new forms that traverse disparate approaches to art and culture. Building upon their contributions, this article explores the continuity between experimental animation, surrealism and music video, with a view to discovering the subversive potential of this matrix. In order to probe this potential, the author examines how music video directors experiment with animation technique as a means of subversion and enrichment of popular music video. Through close analysis of music videos directed by Adam Jones, Stephen Johnson, Floria Sigismondi and Chris Hopewell, this article charts the continuity of surrealist strategy across culturally specific moments in history, thus provoking questions around the perceived functions of animated media and popular music video.


Author(s):  
Keith Howard

K-pop, Korean popular music, is a central component in Korea’s cultural exports. It helps brand Korea, and through sponsorships and tie-ups, generates attention for Korea that goes well beyond the music and media industries. This essay traces the history of Korean popular music, from its emergence in the early decades of the twentieth century, through the influence of America on South Korea’s cultural development and the assimilation of genres such as rap, reggae, punk, and hip hop, to the international success of Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ and the idol group BTS. It explores the rise of entertainment companies, how they overcame the digital challenge, and how their use of restrictive contracts created today’s cultural economy. It introduces issues of gender and sexuality, and outlines how music videos and social media have been used to leverage fandom.


Author(s):  
Matthew Sumera

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This chapter seeks to explain the potency and appeal of music in contemporary war representations. Through the close analysis of war music videos—amateur productions, set to some form of popular music and posted online—the chapter addresses the ways in which music has become a generative, affective force in countless war depictions. In examining the ways in which such videos circulate, including how soldiers create, discuss, and use them, the chapter ultimately argues that these contemporary audiovisions are not about war as much as they are part of it.


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALLAN F. MOORE ◽  
RUTH DOCKWRAY

AbstractAnalysis of the spatial elements of popular music recordings can be made by way of the ‘sound-box’, a concept that acknowledges the way sound sources are perceived to exist in four dimensions: laterality, register, prominence, and temporal continuity. By late 1972 producers working across a range of styles and in different geographical locations had adopted a normative positioning of sound sources across these dimensions. In 1965 no such norm existed. This article contextualizes the notion of the sound-box within academic discourse on popular music and explores the methodology employed by a research project that addressed the gradual coming-into-existence of the norm, which the project defined as the diagonal mix. A taxonomy of types of mix is offered, and a chronology of the adoption of the diagonal mix in rock is presented.


Trama ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (39) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Domingos BALADELI

A Teoria dos Multiletramentos enfatiza que a sofisticação das mídias potencializa a variedade de recursos audiovisuais como discurso próprio da contemporaneidade. Em termos educacionais, a multimodalidade amplia o acesso do aluno a significados e, destaca a hibridização das linguagens na composição de textos. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar os resultados de um projeto de extensão sobre os multiletramentos, com ênfase no uso pedagógico do videoclipe musical. Os resultados do projeto, realizado em uma universidade pública no Brasil indicaram; a necessidade de o professor definir critérios para a seleção de videoclipe musical, a definição de objetivos para o uso do videoclipe, a articulação do videoclipe a conteúdos para aprendizagem em Língua Inglesa. Em linhas gerais, concluímos a relevância do papel das narrativas audiovisuais na formação de leitores críticos e, sobretudo, na aprendizagem de Língua Inglesa.Recebido em: 16-12-2019Revisões requeridas em: 02-03-2020Aceito em: 13-03-2020REFERÊNCIAS:BAGULEY, Margaret; PULLEN, Darren L.; SHORT, Megan. Multiliteracies and the new world order. In: PULLEN, D.L.; COLE, D.R. Multiliteracies and technology enhanced education: social practice and the global classroom. Hershey: IGI Global, 2010. p. 01-17.BALADELI, Ana P.D. Cibercultura e ensino de línguas: um olhar sobre a Teoria dos Multiletramentos. In: COSTA, N. V. S. (org.). A Língua Inglesa e seus desdobramentos na ciência. Bonecker, 2019. p. 11-28.BARBOSA, Vânia S.; ARAÚJO, Antonia D. Multimodalidade e letramento visual: um estudo piloto de atividades de leitura disponíveis em sítio eletrônico. Revista da ANPOLL, Florianópolis, n.37, jul./dez.2014, p.17-36. Disponível em: https://revistadaanpoll.emnuvens.com.br/revista/article/view/824 acesso em 04 dez. 2019.BERK, Ronald A. Multimedia teaching with video clips: TV, Movies, YouTube, and motive in the college classroom. International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning, v. 5, n.1, 2009, p. 1-21.BOCHE, Benjamin. Multiliteracies in the classroom: emerging conceptions of first-year teachers. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, v.10, n.1, 2014.BRASIL. Base Nacional Comum Curricular: Ensino Médio. Brasília: MEC/Secretaria de Educação Básica, 2018.BULL, Geoff; ANSTEY, Michele. Elaborating multiliteracies through multimodal texts.London,New York: Routledge, 2019.COPE, Bill; KALANTZIS, Mary. A pedagogy of multiliteracies, learning by design.New York. Palgrave Macmilan, 2015.KRESS, Gunther; VAN LEEUWEN, Theo. Reading images. 2nd.London: Routledge, 2006.MARCHETTI, Lorena; CULLEN, Peter. A multimodal approach in the classroom for creative learning and teaching. Psychological and creative approaches, v.5, n.1, p. 39-51, 2016.McCLAIN, Jordan M. A framework for using popular music videos to teach media literacy. Dialogue: The interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, v.3, n.1, p.38-46, 2016. Disponível em: http://journaldialogue.org/issues/a-framework-for-using-popular-music-videos-to-teach-media-literacy/ acesso em 03 out. 2019.NEW LONDON GROUP. A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review; 66, 1, Spring, 1996.NICOLESCU, Barasab. Um novo tipo de conhecimento: transdisciplinaridade. In: NICOLESCU, B. et al (org.). Educação e transdisciplinaridade. Brasília: UNESCO, 2000. p. 13-29.ROJO, Roxane; MOURA, Eduardo (orgs.). Multiletramentos na escola. São Paulo: Parábola, 2012.SERAFINI, Frank. Reading multimodal texts: perceptual, structural and ideological perspectives. Children’s Literature in Education, v. 42, 2010, p. 85-104.SERAFINI, Frank. Expanding perspectives for comprehending visual images in multimodal texts. Journal Adolescent and Adult Literacy, v. 54, n.5, p. 342-350, 2011.STREET, Brian V. Eventos de letramento e práticas de letramento: teoria e prática nos novos estudos do letramento. In: MAGALHÃES, I. (org.). Discursos e práticas de letramento. Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras, 2012. p. 69-92.WARNER, Chantelle; DUPUY, Beatrice. Moving toward multiliteracies in foreign language teaching: past and present perspectives... and beyond. Foreign Language Annals, v. 51, 2017, p. 116-128. Disponível em: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/flan.12316 acesso em 15 nov. 2019. 


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