Deborah HoldsteinProfessor of English at Columbia College Chicago,

Film Critic, Editor

Holdstein - Music Video: Messages and Structures

• “Videos seem to divide into two categories: Those with allegedly explicit ‘political’ themes, and those which revive the traditional U.S. film musical.”

• The fantasy video is based entirely on performance. This format puts “the group or star in a mythical, medieval, exotic or surrealistic series of images and locations.”

• “Videos make the artist more accessible to the fans. When they come to a performance, then they bring or wear things they've seen in the video.”

• “In the past, artists portrayal will only be left to the viewers imagination or how they are seen in concert, the record album cover pose, photographs and interviews in Rolling Stone, Time.”

• But nowadays, “the video image is quicker and more powerful.”

Holdstein - Michael Jackson - ‘Beat It’

http://youtu.be/p3jCPtxOkGo

• Holdstein: “Is Jackson portrayed as a ‘fantasy’, a ‘political commentator’, or as a ‘mediator of social conflict’.”

• The song does address ‘racism’ and ‘social class’ : “They told him don't you ever come around here, don't wanna see your face, you better disappear.”

• It doesn't need words, it has faces, gestures, emphasis, and a narrative one could easily follow without ‘Beat It’ on the soundtrack.

• Jackson, the mediator, has become a surreal ‘fantasy’ figure, involved yet detached from the action he seems to resolve.

• With a vivid start to the scene's, we see several men, who we will learn are members of a gang about to meet their rivals for a ‘rumble.’

• Political Commentator: “We come upon Jackson in his apartment, lying on his bed. Somehow he instinctively knows there will be trouble.”

• Crosscutting continues from Jackson to the gangs, alternating between one gang piling on a truck, presumably to the rumble's location, and the other gang, walking.

• The suspense of ‘who'll get there first,’ and ‘what'll happen when they get there’ is heightened by a question: Where's Michael Jackson, and what role will he play in all of this?

• The traditional U.S. film musical: WEST SIDE STORY is revisited. Both gang leaders line up against each other, jabbing knife shots.

• But the scene is portrayed as a ‘fantasy’ through dance. Jackson enters to stop the fight (‘mediator of social conflict’) before all characters dance behind him in one large choreographed routine.

Duran Duran – ‘Hungry like the Wolf’

http://youtu.be/oOg5VxrRTi0

• The videos' pace and editing are strikingly like that of TV commercials. As Holdstein would state: “It is the selling of both product and image”, in this case, the ‘star’.

• Cinematic music video, with shots of jungles, rivers, elephants, cafes and marketplaces.

• Referring to Holdstein’s theory that videos ‘revive the traditional U.S. film musical’, the band have been inspired by the atmosphere of the film: ‘Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.’

• The lead singer is on a hunt in Asia, where black women are painted to resemble and act like savages.

• In the video, lead singer Simon Le Bon's head rises in slow motion out of the river as rain pours down.

• He then chases a tiger-like Indian woman played by Bermudian model Sheila Ming, from open markets in the city through obstacles in the jungle.

• During the chase, Le Bon has his face mopped by a young boy and overturns a bar room table, culminating in a final chase and struggle in a jungle clearing, which is sexually suggestive.

• Fantasy Video: As Holdstein suggests, the mythical and exotic location is relevant here, with Ming being the desirable prize of the chase.

• Like in Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, crosscutting occurs with the other band members in the meantime, hunting for Le Bon.