Description
Book Synopsisshowcases a new generation of scholarship on music video as a cultural form.
Trade Review“
Medium Cool reopens the long-dormant field of music video studies in sharp and insightful ways. With a keen eye on questions of history, aesthetics, and globalization, the essays collected here lay out a bold new map for how future scholars should approach the study of music video in the post-MTV age.”—Gilbert B. Rodman, author of
Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend“Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton’s
Medium Cool is a valuable and timely anthology that moves the scholarly discussion of music video beyond MTV, exploring the past, present, and future of the medium. It also introduces readers to important new voices in music and media studies.”—Gayle F. Wald, author of
Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe“This lively collection brings music video studies up to date and expands its analytical horizons. One of the book’s great strengths is the methodological clarity of the articles assembled here, making this a very useful collection for teaching purposes. Even more impressively, this book moves beyond MTV in several important directions. It charts the international circulation of music video, provides background on understudied historical ancestors of the video clip, and introduces readers to emerging genres of audiovisual expression. This volume will be the new standard work on music video.”—Will Straw, author of
Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America“
Medium Cool will be indispensable for those studying music video, as well as of interest to anyone interested the effect the internet and third generation mobile phone technologies on how audio-visual material is accessed. It may also be of general interest to fans of the music video form, and the fact that many of the videos analysed in
Medium Cool are available on YouTube makes reading this book a great pleasure. This, as much as anything else, marks this book as initiating a new era in music video scholarship.” -- Matthew Campora * M/C Reviews *
“The essays are intriguing and draw on a combination of music-video scholarship, television studies, popular music studies, and popular musicology. . . . This is a book for those interested in intersections between music and visual cultures and aesthetics. Highly recommended.” -- M. Goldsmith * Choice *
“Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton’s omnibus of thought-provoking—and in several cases canon-altering—essays are poised to correct the ‘‘myopia’’ of long-entrenched scholarship on the music video. . . . This is a refreshing and pleasurable compilation which should revitalize and reposition discussions of the music video.” -- Michael T. Spencer * Popular Music and Society *
“This book, well documented and carefully edited, seems to be a major contribution to the literature of popular music and its visual forms. One comes away from it with a greater appreciation for the innovativeness and the challenges involved with this art form.” -- Jack Estes * Journal of American Culture *
Table of ContentsIndex 345
Introduction / Jason Middleton and Roger Beebe 1
Music Video and Synaesthetic Possibility / Kay Dickinson 13
Illustrating Music: The Impossible Embodiments of the Jukebox Film / Amy Herzog 30
The Audio-Vision of Found-Footage Film and Video / Jason Middleton
59
Art/Music/Video.com / Maureen Turim 83
Strange People, Weird Objects: The Nature of Narrativity, Character, and Editing in Music Videos / Carol Vernallis 111
Dancing to a Pacific Beat: Music Video in Papua New Guinea / Philip Hayward 152
Visions of a Sound Nation: Finnish Music Videos and Secured Otherness / Antti-Ville Karja 174
“Coming to You Wherever You Are”: Exploring the Imagined Communities of Muchmusic (Canada) and MTV (United States) / Kip Pegley 200
Elvis from the Waist Up and Other Myths: 1950s Music Television and the Gendering of Rock Discourse / Norma Coates 226
Elvis Goes Global: Aloha! Elvis Live Via Satellite and Music/Tourism/Television / Lisa Parks and Melissa McCartney 252
Video and the Theater of Purity / Warren Zanes 269
“I’m From Rags to Riches”: The Death of Jay-Z / Cynthia Fuchs 290
Paradoxes of Pastiche: Spike Jonze, Hype Williams, and the Race of the Postmodern Auteur / Roger Beebe 303
Bibliography 329
Contributors 341
