Music videos have been seen to contain aspects of all three by several different audiences, most people seeing them as an art form to accompany the music and often help to convey a message told within the music. Many music videos are just performance-based, which could be seen as either none of the topics, or as commercial advertising the band and getting them known, so people will remember them and maybe buy their music. Auteurs have often come to the conclusion that many music videos are just versions of soft porn to attract the “male gaze” as Laura Mulvey describes.
The music video could be seen as a commercial form, as almost every music video contains several close ups of the artists face or instrument when performing, exposing them to the public, so their faces are remembered and related to the music. Visual motifs and symbols to relate to the artist are often used in music videos to relate the band to a certain item or symbol, again making the audience remember the artist when they see that object. The main reason, however, that music videos are seen as commercials is that they glorify the ‘celebrity lifestyle’- and this often involves brand names, such as Beats headphones by Dr. Dre, as advertised in the music video for Party rock anthem by LMFAO. Commodification is used in the videos to make items that would normally not be particularly appealing to audiences, such as fancy headphones, appear very attractive and often attracts the audience into buying them. Another way in which they could be considered commercial is that the main method of consuming music videos is through the internet on sites like YouTube, and when watching a music video it would be impossible to not see an advert for another artist, or a product appear by the side of the music video, or even before or during the video itself.
Laura Mulvey was the first person to really point out the sexualized nature of music videos in the present day. She bought to the public’s attention the “male gaze” and what it entails, and that is that many music videos nowadays are embodiments of soft porn. The voyeuristic treatment of the female body and dismemberment that is seen is so many music videos objectifies women and shows them to be nothing but a toy to be looked at and used by men. The “camera lingers on the subject from the perspective of the heterosexual male”, and many women are offended by this, as it shows the media companies are directing their products at men and not women, creating a patriarchal society in the way that women aren’t allowed to express their feelings in the same way men are.
Despite many people seeing music videos as commercials or porn, most people still see them as an art form. As Matt Hanson said, “it inhabits that crucial space between the commercial and the experimental”. This is showing that music videos are a vital part of everyday life, they accompany the music and can often pay homage to certain other influential or inspirational artists or members of society, or can pay homage to past eras by positively representing them and letting people know what it was like to live in that era. Many artists create pastiches of the above to subtly pay their respects to certain genres or eras by representing them in a different way to how it was intended, for example in the music video of ‘Celestine’ by Spector, when the large black dog is shown, a convention of the gangster rap genre, but they are using it to accompany their indie music. Intertextuality is often used to reference pop culture in music videos, and the public appreciates this, as they enjoy pop culture references.
In conclusion, many music videos could be seen to be commercial, porn or art, or none of the above in some cases where the video is purely performance based and intends no advertising or soft porn. Many auteurs have created controversial videos that challenge the conventions and are considered to be very arty, whereas some music videos are very generic and conventional of pop or rap video with a very fetishistic treatment of the female body, and some videos just take advantage of the fact that thousands or even millions of people watch them and advertise products and other artists as much as they can to boost profits. Genre often plays a huge part in which one of these categories a video will fall under, as pop music is often commercial, rap and hip-hop porn, and indie is often the more arty genre.
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