Interdisciplinary Approaches to Consumer Culture

Background Information

Mass media by definition, lends itself to an immense history. This section is intended to provide brief overviews that can be useful in class and support the foundations of this unit.

A Brief History of the Collaboration of Moving Pictures and Sound

From the camera obscura of ancient times to the development of the daguerreotype in the mid 1800's, the art of reproducing images has developed and changed for centuries. Despite this longstanding visual development, motion pictures weren't truly developed until the late 1800s. During that time many inventors/artists played with a variety of different ways to create the illusion of the moving picture. It wasn't until Thomas Alva Edison and his team of inventors developed the Vitascope that moving pictures as cinema became commercially successful.

Throughout the first two decades of the 20th century, cinema grew and expanded. The cities of Chicago and Los Angeles grew into film meccas. During this time orchestrated scores, or pressed recordings would be synchronized to the moving picture screen to enhance mood. It wasn't until Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer, in 1927, that the synchronicity of speech and image was reached. ¹³ While The Jazz Singer only contains particular segments of coordinated sound, the film has been credited as being the first talkie or film with accompanied sound.

These talking pictures presented a new frontier and a new problem for cinema. At first, film only featured the visual capturing of acting and not of speech. Once this transition to sound happened, actors were expected to speak and sing as well as act. ¹⁴ This transition is clearly and wittily depicted in the popular 1952, Stanley Donen musical, Singin' in the Rain. ¹⁵ It was around the late 1930's that the musical became widely popular among motion pictures, but it wasn't until the 1950s that films actually featured the rock and roll genre.

In 1955, the film Blackboard Jungle popularized the song "(We're Going to) Rock

Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. ¹⁶ During the 1950's social anxieties were heightened by this new musical genre and oftentimes it was cited as the provocateur of teenage rebellion. Originally published as a novel in 1954 by Evan Hunter, The Blackboard Jungle was widely popular; so much so, that director and writer Richard Brooks decided to turn it into a warning about cultural misfits and the threat of juvenile delinquency. ¹⁷ Instead of serving as a warning about cultural decline, it spurred teenagers to commit acts of vandalism in both Minneapolis and Hartford as well as far off as London and Dublin.

Previously in 1954, Bill Haley had already popularized rock and roll through the song, "Shake, Rattle and Roll," but it didn't nearly have the impact of "Rock Around the Clock." ¹⁸ Popularized by the film, Haley's song streaked to the top of the Billboard charts and stayed in the #1 position for 24 weeks. ¹⁹ In Todd Leopold's article "The 50 Year Old Song That Started It All," he points out that "rock 'n' roll is often a series of accidents — the right people, the right chemistry, the right sound. Bill Haley created an outstanding rock 'n' roll record, and he knew how to put it across." ²⁰

The rock and roll revolution was widely disseminated by Top 40 radio stations and the popularity of 45 rpm records, but also by the spread of television. Full scale commercialized television began towards end of the 1940's. Variety shows like The Texaco Star Theater, featuring Milton Berle, were made available to be viewed in the comfort of American homes. From about 6,000 television sets in 1946 the numbers rose to roughly 12 million in 1951. By 1955, the year Blackboard Jungle came out, half of all U.S. homes had a television set. On August 7th, 1955, Bill Haley and His Comets performed their highly popularized hit "Rock Around the Clock" and followed up with "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" during Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town. ²¹ Now, popular music had a televised face and body to accompany the sound.

Popularity grew with variety shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and paved the way for Top 40 music to enter into living rooms across the country through another access point. This assortment of artists ranged in race, culture, age, and genre; Cancelled in 1971, the show featured a variety of artists during its 1068 episode run; to name a few: B. B. King, Elvis Presley, Jackson 5, Jefferson Airplane, Johnny Cash. ²² Nevertheless, television continued to feature musical acts on shows like American Bandstand and Soul Train. Additionally, late night television programming and films starring musical acts helped carry this combination of motion picture and sound through the 60s (Hard Day's Night) to current times (Katy Perry: Part of Me).

During the 1960's there were about 640 community antenna television stations throughout the United States. Access to not only variety shows, but news, sitcoms, and dramas was also sought after by people in both rural and urban areas. As this desire for televisions increased, the demand for additional access, programming, and channels increased as well. Prodded by the sports industry, New York City helped provide local cable to those interested in local basketball and hockey games. New broadcast networks appeared. Around the time of the decline of The Ed Sullivan show, there were about 80,000 cable subscribers in New York. This began the development of cable networks

Like Time Inc.'s Home Box Office (HBO), ESPN, and TBS. ²³

Time Warner invested much of its money in niche programming and marketing. Generally speaking, it was a great idea for their investment. At the time record companies already provided music videos as free promotional material. This free material provided low cost programming that featured music. On August 1, 1981, MTV was launched and their first aired music video was, ironically, the song, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. Just as the invention of talking films had presented a dilemma for some actors with dubious voices or accents, so MTV threatened radio performers with the challenge of face-time. MTV took on a variety of roles through the next two decades. The decline of network ratings within the first decade resulted in the development of their own programming: The Real World, Headbangers Ball, Yo! MTV Raps, Total Request Live, The Hills. ²⁴

Once again, technology provided more access to cultural texts with the advent of social media networks, where music videos can be seen 24 hours a day. Additionally, many of these networks allow users to have choice over their content and to provide uninterrupted videos at the click of a mouse. Venues such as YouTube (2005) already provided channels that allowed accessibility to particular record labels and artists.

Music Video Construct

There are three main kinds of music video: concept based, performance based, narrative based.

Concept-Based Videos

Some critics saw these videos as a hodgepodge of images over sound, which in some cases they were; but much of the critical response had to do with the time period in which music video skyrocketed. For a variety of reasons concept-based videos were most common with the advent of MTV. While record labels had used music videos as promotional materials, the music video came at a time that witnessed many shifts: artistically (modernity to postmodernity), technological (old media to new media), and just the newness of the medium in popular form. This mode also allowed for space for a director's or audience's metaphorical interpretations of texts versus literal representations. Some examples of this trend include Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" (1986), Nine-Inch-Nails' "Closer" (1994), and most recently OKGO's "This Too Shall Pass – Rube Goldberg Machine" (2010).

Performance-Based Videos

Performances-based videos spotlight the entertainer(s) performing their song. These videos are achieved in a variety of different ways. Sometimes they are either presented as concert footage; as in the U2 video "Where the Streets Have No Name" (1987) or Guns and Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" (1987). Other times they are presented as routines in front of groups, as portrayed in Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (1991) or OKGO's "This Too Shall Pass – Marching Band" (2010)

Narrative-Based Videos

These videos have storylines that accompany the song. Sometimes the visual narrative follows the lyric values of the song, but that is not always the case. Additionally, sometimes actors play out the narrative, but again that is not always the case. What all of these videos do have in common is that they relay a story to the audience. Some examples of this can be found in: Eminem's "Lose Yourself" (2002), Beyoncé's "If I Were a Boy" (2010), Katy Perry's "Part of Me" (2011).