ST 5 (1) pp.

67–71 Intellect Limited 2012

The Soundtrack
Volume 5 Number 1
© 2012 Intellect Ltd Review. English language. doi: 10.1386/st.5.1.67_5

Review

Music Video and the Politics of Representation, Diane

Railton and Paul Watson (2011)
Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 176 pages,
ISBN 978-0-7486-3323-4 (U.S. $35 paperback)

Reviewed by Lori Burns, The University of Ottawa

While cultural critics once warned of the imminent demise of the music video
(Beebe and Middleton 2007), a renewed enthusiasm for the cultural form
across the music industry is now being acknowledged as a ‘turn to video’
(Holt  2011). This turn has coincided with the unprecedented rise of social
media and the resulting increase in digital music sales (Suhr 2012). Internet
sites such as YouTube and Vevo have made it possible for viewers to access not
only the most recent video releases, but also a full range of historical videos,
allowing for comprehensive examination of video trends, design strategies
and artistic development. Contributing to a more nuanced understanding of
the music video in this period of major industrial and technological change is,
therefore, a relevant and timely task.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of scholars analysed music
videos as a postmodern cultural form, considering the implications of artist
promotion and spectatorship and offering critical textual analyses of selected
videos (Kaplan 1987; Lewis 1990; Goodwin 1992; Frith et al. 1993). In the
first decade of the new millennium, we witnessed a developing interest in
video aesthetics and design features (Vernallis 2004), as well as in the debates
surrounding the production and dissemination of music videos (Beebe and
Middleton 2007; Keazor and Wübbena 2010). In the domain of sociology,
scholars developed methodologies for the analysis of music video content,
tracking the occurrence of specific representations and the impacts of these
representations upon viewers (i.e. Emerson 2002; Ward et al. 2005).

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Review

Building upon the foundations established by these scholars, Railton and

Watson turn their full attention to a culturally significant aspect of contempo-
rary music video – the representations of gender, race and ethnicity – as they
seek to explore ‘the relationship between popular culture, raced and sexed
identity, pleasure and politics’ (10). Adopting a post-feminist approach to these
axes of identity and subjectivity, the authors develop a critical framework that
is ‘concerned with the ways in which the practices and conventions of repre-
sentation in music video both constrain and make possible ways of think-
ing about ourselves as individuals within contemporary society’ (10). In other
words, they explore music video as a ‘key site through which cultural identi-
ties are produced, inscribed and negotiated’ (10). Their interpretive approach
to the visual discourse of music video is based on a critical conception of post-
feminism, authorship and genre, with which they examine normative construc-
tions of race, gender and ethnicity.
In Chapter 1, the authors turn to post-feminism as a valuable paradigm for
the study of how social subjectivities are constructed in and through popular
culture. Attending to the debates around the term post-feminism (which is
taken by some critics to suggest that we are now in a period that succeeds
feminism (21), and which is rejected by some feminist scholars for its empha-
sis on individualization, hyperfemininity and economic success (23)), the
authors adopt R. Moseley and J. Read’s understanding of the term as ‘the
coming together of “traditional” feminist values with a historically and mate-
rially different experience of being young and female’ (26, citing Moseley and
Read 2002: 240). The pertinence of post-feminism to music video analysis is
illustrated with a discussion of the video Stupid Girls by artist P!nk, a partic-
ularly apt video selection due to its very evident concern with representa-
tions of women and femininity. Cautioning against realist paradigms for the
interpretation of gender constructions, the authors advocate for an approach
that sees reality and the real world as ‘inextricably bound up with, indeed
produced through, forms of representation’ (19). They hold up the P!nk video
as one that ‘signals the plasticity of identity’ and ‘visualizes both the body and
sexed/gendered identity as contingent and malleable, or, more precisely, as
selected, produced and performed within specific discursive formations’ (19).
This conception of representationally produced reality and discursively
constructed identity is vital to the authors’ interpretive approach to video, as
they understand music videos (products of popular culture) to be of political
significance and one of the primary means by which ‘the discourses through
which we understand ourselves, through which we are ourselves, circulate
and become legitimate in the society in which we live’ (20). In this context,
P!nk’s video is seen to articulate post-feminist values but at the same time
to critique those values ‘in so far as its attack on femininity chimes with
the work of a number of prominent second-wave writers who sought to expose
the insidious links between femininity and patriarchy’ (30). The authors thus
capture the complex nature of the feminist and post-feminist debate, demon-
strating that P!nk’s ‘representations include not only the strong can-do girls
of second-wave feminism, but also the “girls with ambition” who dream of
being president, and the powered-up consumer babes so often associated
with post-feminism […]’ (29). The analysis of Stupid Girls brings to the fore
the challenges and paradoxes of the post-feminist stance and stimulates criti-
cal thought about gender and sexuality, serving as a dynamic illustration of
the book’s concerns for a politics of representation. The exploration of post-
feminist issues in contemporary video would have been strengthened through

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 Review

the analysis of additional music video texts, in order to show a broader range
of post-feminist articulations.
As their second theoretical axis, Railton and Watson consider genre
to be an important vehicle for an artist or band’s ‘appeal to authenticity’,
because ‘genres of music video function to legitimate both perform-
ance and performer’ (48). Situating their approach to genre in relation to
E. A. Kaplan’s (1987) scheme of narrative forms and rhetorical types (romance,
social consciousness, modernism, opposition and nihilism), as well as
D. Lynch’s (1984) structures based on formal categories (performance, narra-
tive and experimental videos) and J. Gow’s (1992) fine distinctions between
conceptual video and performance video, Railton and Watson identify four
genre types: pseudo-documentary video, staged performance video, art
video and narrative video. Devoting Chapter 2 to these generic forms, they
dispute the classification of videos according to musical genres, rather than
video genres, arguing that ‘despite the integral relationship between music
videos and the songs they promote, genres of music neither map onto genres
of music video nor … necessarily govern the look of any given video’ (45).
This argument is based on a concern for formal and aesthetic commonality,
which the authors feel is to be located in video genres, but not in musical
genres. The privileging of video genre over music genre here will surely yield
some disciplinary tensions as music scholars may argue, to the contrary, that
videos belonging to the same musical genre, despite contrasting formal and
aesthetic characteristics, do indeed share artistic values and communicate
common cultural values. As the authors then discuss the four video genres,
the reader is asked to consider the aesthetic and formal values between
and among many videos identified by their video genre without regard
for music genre. For instance, in the discussion of art videos, the authors
group together videos that feature animation, listing videos by progressive
rock artist Peter Gabriel, alternative artists The White Stripes, R&B artist
Melanie G, disco/house artist Junior Senior and alternative metal artists A
Perfect Circle. The observation that these videos share the feature of anima-
tion does not nuance how these very different videos communicate mean-
ings to their cultural constituencies. That being identified as a concern for
this reviewer, the genre model proposed by the authors is nevertheless very
suggestive for further analysis.
The third theoretical axis for this study is the concept of authorship, a term
that becomes intertwined with the notion of the director as auteur and also
with the attribution of authenticity to the artist or band. Taking Madonna as
a lead example, an artist presumed by critics to be the author of her artistic
work, Railton and Watson highlight the debate between star-as-auteur versus
director-as-auteur in the attribution of video authorship (69), but also point to
the inadequacy of these models for the consideration of the complex question
of authenticity. Nirvana’s In Bloom is analysed for its communication of grunge
authenticity even as it framed within a commercial enterprise that is attempt-
ing to market the artists (72). This example is well chosen to explore artistic
authenticity, however, it does not make clear the authors’ point about directo-
rial authorship, which is a theoretical strand that is left unresolved here. Even
more problematic for the questions of authenticity are the chosen examples
of a video featuring four Bratz dolls and a video featuring the animated band
Gorillaz. Given the wealth of popular music videos for which an analysis of
authorship and authenticity would yield complex and multi-layered readings,
these selections disappoint.

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Review

Following the critical–theoretical explorations of Part I (Chapters 1

through 3), Part II (Chapters 4 through 6) is offered as the analytic examina-
tion of sexed, raced and gendered identity in music video. Beginning with
Chapter 4 on race and femininity, the authors take a theoretical excursion into
Victorian discourse on female sexuality and its intersections with race in order
to detail a concern for the ways in which historical concepts are perpetuated
in the images and underlying concepts of contemporary video. For instance,
the authors discuss the trope of black female sexuality as available and exces-
sive, showing this to be represented by Beyoncé’s video Baby Boy. By contrast,
white female sexuality is identified as restricted and contingent, represented
by Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head. Raising compelling inter-
pretive issues around female sexuality, race and embodiment, the analyses
of these videos do not, however, illustrate in practical terms the theoretical
principles of post-feminism, genre and authorship that were so well defined
in the first half of the book. While the earlier chapters raise expectations for
that framework to serve as the undergirding for the entire study, these param-
eters largely fall to the side for the remainder of the book. In order to explore
video representations of ethnicity, Chapter 5 develops a comparative analy-
sis of some Christina Aguilera videos that were released for both Anglo and
Latina/o audiences, finding subtle differences between the different language
versions that can be interpreted for their representational (sex, ethnicity)
significance. Here, although neither post-feminism nor genre are explicitly
engaged, the authors do address questions of authenticity as it pertains to
ethnic representations. The work on masculinity in Chapter 6 offers an impor-
tant contribution to a growing area of interest in gender studies and demon-
strates that ‘masculinity is every bit as discursive, contingent, constructed and
performed as femininity’ (123). The complex workings of hegemonic mascu-
linity and hypermasculinity are explored in a series of examples, with results
of great interest in the analyses of D’Angelo’s Untitled and Robbie Williams’
Rock DJ.
Having used this book as a required text for a course on music video, I can
attest to the richness of the critical questions that Railton and Watson explore.
Readers from the disciplines of popular culture, women’s and gender studies,
media studies and music will find value in the theoretical discussions as well
as in the analytic explorations of how music videos do socially ‘formative’ and
not merely ‘expressive’ work in culture (87).

References
Beebe, R. and Middleton, J. (eds) (2007), Medium Cool: Music Videos from
Soundies to Cellphones, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Emerson, R. (2002), ‘“Where my girls at?” Negotiating black womanhood in
music videos’, Gender & Society, 16: 1, pp. 115–35.
Frith, S., Goodwin, A. and Grossberg, L. (1993), Sound and Vision: The Music
Video Reader, London: Routledge.
Goodwin, A. (1992), Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and
Popular Culture, London: Routledge.
Gow, J. (1992), ‘Music video as communication: Popular formulas and emer-
ging genres’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 26: 2, pp. 41–70.
Holt, F. (2011), ‘Is music becoming more visual? Online video content in the
music industry’, Visual Studies, 26: 1, pp. 50–61.

70
 Review

Kaplan, E. A. (1987), Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism

and Consumer Culture, London: Methuen.
Keazor, H. and Wubbena, T. (eds) (2010), Rewind, Play, Fast Forward: The Past,
Present and Future of the Music Video, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
Lewis, L. (1990), Gender Politics and MTV, Philadelphia: Temple University
Press.
Lynch, D. (1984), ‘Music videos: From performance to Dada-surrealism’,
Journal of Popular Culture, 18: 1, pp. 53–57.
Moseley, R. and Read, J. (2002), ‘“Having it Ally”: Popular television (post-)
feminism’, Feminist Media Studies, 2: 2, pp. 231–49.
Suhr, H. C. (2012), Social Media and Music: The Digital Field of Cultural
Production, New York: Peter Lang.
Vernallis, C. (2004), Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context,
New York: Columbia University Press.
Ward, M., Hansbrough, E. and Walker, E. (2005), ‘Contributions of music
video exposure to black adolescents’ gender and sexual schemas’, Journal
of Adolescent Research, 20: 2, pp. 143–66.

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