Andrew Goodwin Music Video Theory

Andrew Goodwin, a philosopher of music videos explored various types of  music videos and then was to write a book called "Dancing In the Distraction Factory". Within his book he states that there are five key aspects to a music video. Andrew Goodwin  identifies the key features that distinguish music by explaining that:

• Music videos more than often contain demonstrations of typical genre characteristics. Examples of this are if the video contains a dance routine, the video is to typically for a girl/boy pop band. Or a rap video will typically include flash cars, bling and women erotically dancing usually by pools. 

• Music videos frequently make reference to the notion of looking and the voyeuristic treatment of the body (mainly the female body). The notion of looking involves both men  and women being portrayed seductively or as they are making eye contact the audience by facing directly at the camera. However, the notion of looking can be reversed by the use of props. These props can be items such as mirrors, television screens and cameras. Voyeurism is widely used to sell the artist's music through their own sex appeal. A recent example of an artists would be Miley Cyrus through her representation of sex appeal in her video of "Wrecking Ball". In todays era of music videos voyeurism is slightly one sided. Typically it is mainly women who portray their sex appeal, very rarely is it a male doing so.

• When an artist is assigned to their record label, the record label tend to have demand on how the artist is presented on camera and to their audience. Eg. What type of shots and angles are used in the music video and what they should be wearing. Majority of the time the camera shots including the artist are often close ups that help sell the artist. These close ups are to make the artist's face memorable but also their style unique.   

• Quite often there is intertextual references to films, television programs, other music videos etc. These are things that the audience will be able to connect and make link with from both textual pieces. A prime example of this would be Will Smith's Men in Black used the the film franchise Men in Black. 

• The relation of visuals to the song. This is how the music video illustrates (The use of set of images to present the meaning of lyrics and genre) , amplifies( Similar to repeatability. Meaning and effects are manipulated and constantly shown through the video and drummed into our vision) and disjunctures (This is where the meaning of the song is completely ignored)