Our thoughts, actions and lives have turned today into objects on screen. Object, mean elements that are made and created. Objects can only represent us but they can never be us as real living lives. Therefore, it would be interesting to study a certain aspect of what we see on screen everyday, the screen who takes a big part of our daily lives despite our will. Looking at music video clips, they are linked to one’s hearing, vision and sentiments. A music video clip is a series of sequential movies clips, supposedly related to the sound as the singed lyrics. Producers generate scenes using people who are directed and manipulated. It is interesting to question the aim of the visual intervention in the music as sound and lyrics. Knowing that the visual culture in our world nowadays is interested in what the eye looks at and see, it is noticed that it evokes certain pleasures and attraction. The digital technology is somehow guilty, in the sense that it is affecting the quality of music that can stand by itself to deliver a certain message to its listeners. Music is a combination of sound and language. Sound is a source of imagination; it is the mother that gives birth to visuals running in the mind of the listener, relative to oneself. As for the lyrics of the song, if there are any, they join the sound to clarify a certain meaning and to direct the listener closer to the composer’s intention.
The visual, language and sound work together to deliver an intended message. It is necessary to study the importance of the visual in relation to music.
Digital technology has distracted the user, or in this case, the producer from the aim of it. Modern technology is there to facilitate production and help generate the intended message or result. In the contrary, music video clips producers are using digital technology in a passive way that leads to discarding the meaning that is supposed to be generated. In this case, it is failing in applying its main function.
But what if, our contemporary audience enjoys esthetic visuals as only an accessory to the music and not a meaningful value? It is also important to take into consideration the audience, because they are the target of such product. For example in the Arab world, the display the female body as a tool of selling a music video clip, is enticing to the oriental audience, living in an oriental culture. In this case, the visual is not adding meaning to the music or is not simply strengthening the message, but only functions as a decorative value that can ease its marketing. Therefore the visual can sometimes intentionally be used to attract a certain audience that will view it before listening to it. A Video clip in this case overtakes the priority of selling a song; it becomes a visual pleasure before it ends being a hearing one.
In addition, video clips are the representation of reality or in some cases the manipulation of it. In this case, adding the visual aspect to music play the role of creating a new world to serve the audience in the sense of making their desires possible through video and production. It doesn’t add value to the music but satisfies the eye of the viewer.
From a personal point of view, the visual if needs to be added to music, ought to have a more effective function than just esthetics and selling. Oldies music is now in archives, and we view them as representing a certain culture or era, that is why they remain memorable. For example, 80s music is mostly about crazy new lifestyles intervention: feminism, new fashion, love and freedom of thought. This is how music plays a certain role that is more effective than just a secondary communication tool to the visual in a music video clip. Music can by itself represent a culture. Music has its own value and power, therefore whatever is added to it must have a more powerful aim, and not a distracting intervention that only deviates the active participation of the listener to his passive viewing.
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