I've seen the big hair and the brightly colored leggings and sweatbands. But other than that, I've seen very little of the 80s. Oh, and acid-washed jeans and Farrah Fawcett hair, as seen here on my father and mother, respectively:
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| (To be fair, this was Christmas 1990, but still 80s accurate. My mother will kill me for this. :D) |
I think a lot of this futurist focus is coming unconsciously from the rise and development of postmodernism. A lot of the artificiality of the 80s style seems to be a projection of what people imagined the world becoming. The site about postmodernism states that postmodernism was "an intentional movement...to subvert what is seen as dominant in modernism." One of the dominant ideas in the era of modernism was that of "progress through science and technology." America was fighting to become more technologically advanced than some of our international rivals, particularly the Soviet Union, as this was smack-dab in the middle of the Cold War era. Thus, if postmodernism was attempting to subvert this dominant idea, then a criticism and skepticism of technology was to be expected in the postmodernism movement. I think this skepticism was depicted nicely in a lot of the music videos we were given as examples of the 80s. A lot of the futuristic details presented in these videos were exaggerated--depicting just how skeptical people were about the rise of technology.
Specifically focusing on "Video Killed the Radio Star," the lyrics were actually supposed to be about the technological changes occurring starting in the 60s, and nostalgia for the past. It was about the way in which the development of television had completely changed the face of entertainment, and had "killed" the old-timey radio shows, because now people could watch the action instead of just listening and imagining it.
"I heard you on the wireless back in '52 / Lying awake intent at tuning in on you / If I was young it didn't stop you coming through....They took the credit for your second symphony / Rewritten by machine and new technology / and now I understand the problems you can see...Video killed the radio star / Pictures came and broke your heart...In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone too far / Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on VTR."
(VTR is the abbreviation for video tape recorder)
I think that the development of MTV and the music video was another facet to this change: a focus on the visual rather than on the audible. Before music videos, people could listen to a song, and imagine their own story or scenario in their minds. But music videos brought with them visual interpretations of songs, which in a way, dictated the way people could view the "story" behind a song.
For me, this idea connected to a lecture from my Romanticism and Music class. We discussed how in the romantic era, there was a huge debate about program music vs absolute music. If you don't know anything about music history, basically program music was music that told a story through the instrumental music--and then the composer would add a "program," or a description of what was going on and what the audience should listen for. This got all the neo-Classicist composers up in arms because they thought that it was always supposed to be up to the audience as to what they "saw" or felt through the music. In absolute music, the instrumental music may or may not actually represent anything, and what it did convey certainly wasn't dictated to the audience through a program. These neo-Classicist staunch supporters of absolute music felt that adding a program to the compositions was giving the composer too much control over what their audience was going to think about.
As I was reading about postmodernism and the 80s, and watching these videos, I started to see music videos as the modern-day equivalent to program music. It's like people can listen to a song on the radio, and the music will evoke certain thoughts or feelings or scenes in their minds. But then they watch the music video, and see the artist's interpretation of the song--and suddenly, every time they hear that song, they are seeing the music video, the artist's interpretation, instead of their own.
I find it really ironic that the video for this song--a commentary on the effect of television--was one of the first videos to be broadcast on MTV. I don't know that the Buggles were trying to comment on music videos as all with the release of this one, because I know the focus of the song was about television in the 60s (and especially since they didn't write the song or record it first), but I think that the message of the song can be applied to the development of music videos. I also think that the amount of "futuristic technology" depicted in the video was a great illustration of the postmodern skepticism about the rise of technology, and what would happen to the future of this country if we kept moving forward technologically.
Although...I'm still disappointed we don't have any of those cool things people thought we'd have, like hoverboards or hovercrafts or crazy spaceship houses like on The Jetsons (which was created in the 60s, but was further produced for syndication in the 80s). But it's not 2062 yet, so we can still hold out hope!
I thought it was really interesting what you said about program music verses absolute music: I'd never heard of either in such specifics before. I think it's really relevant to what we've been talking about on the subject of television ruining the radio, though. When I was younger and I actually sat down and watched music videos, they almost never were what I had in mind for that particular song, and they always kind of made it weird for me. There was never a case where the video ruined the song for me entirely, but there were definitely cases where I would think about the music video every time I listened to that song where I would have thought differently about it if I had only listened.
ReplyDeleteIt's all a matter of taste, I suppose. In that way, music videos are kind of bad ass for some artists because its their expression, they're not trying to do anything for attention - they're just being weird because that's what they want. I've seen many a creepy/tripped out music video in my time that I never would have thought up otherwise and even if I didn't particularly like it, it was still kind of cool because that's what the artist wanted. And the more you know about what they choose and why, the more you know about them and their music.
No matter what generation it is, people are constantly wondering what the future might be like. It's an addictive idea. It can be seen throughout various movies, television series, and most importantly, music. We all have curiosity regarding what might be. As you mentioned, Video Killed the Radio Star and Tom Petty's music video hold both very futuristic themes. They are definitely not the only music videos that shared this same idea. But anyway, those videos gave people something to think about. They poked and prodded at the idea of what technology can do and how it effects us. At first glance of these music videos, people might think they are strange or weird...but there is almost always a deeper meaning behind them. You know? People need to just separate the words from the images and think about what message artists are trying to portray to them.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the biggest ideas behind awkward/weird music videos that most of society isn't comfortable with is to be open-minded when you watch them. You should be open minded when you're exposed to a new idea, and maybe that's part of why a lot of music videos are so extreme in their weirdness - to teach that lesson.
DeleteAck, sorry my comment to this didn't take, Allyson. I did read this and comment, but blogger must have hiccuped. It's a really excellent post too. It's visually vibrant, you work well and appropriately with the class reading and the concept of postmodernism and take it off to an original level, and it's just fun to read. Very well done! Also, I'm still mad that there still aren't any flying cars and families aren't taking regular trips to the moon.
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