Sia: “Music is for your ears, not your eyes.”
but MV is for both
By XINYI WU | October 9, 2019
The two music videos I chose are from the Australian singer, Sia. One is Chandelier and the other is the Greatest. The former is an implication of children and domestic violence, while the latter is based on the tragedy “Orlando nightclub shooting”. After spectators finish watching these videos, it can take them a long time to emotionally recover from the sorrow and distress that these videos may cause. The pattern of these two music videos shed light on the function of art - to shock people. There are users who do not watch musical videos and only listen to the song itself. But through the visual elements of music videos, spectators can further grasp the singer’s intent and have a deeper understanding of the message being transmitted.
(https://youtu.be/2vjPBrBU-TM & https://youtu.be/GKSRyLdjsPA )
In Chandelier, the musical video is a combination of ballet and modern dance performance. It may be kind of disturbing and difficult to understand at the first glance. Young as she was, the 14-year-old dancer, Maddie Ziegler expressed complicated emotions through exaggerated expressions, body language and dramatic and campy [3] ballet performance. Not like high art (fundamentally moralistic) nor like avant-garde art (which discusses the tension between beauty and morality through extreme presentation), I would like to refer to this MV as the third kind of entirely aesthetic art - "camp". Besides this, as Susan Sontag pointed out, camp is unintentional and not trying too hard. Sia once talked about her intentions of music videos. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2-tPcQaSa0) She said: “One thing I liked about making the videos with Maddie (the dancer in Chandelier) was that it showed little kids new ways to express themselves that were not already established. It just sort of felt like it is free to be a weirdo, you know? And I liked that.” On this level, she did not mean to convey the message in purpose. It is the spectators and listeners who can get the message themselves. The seemingly relaxing and joking video somehow points to a serious social issue, bypassing moral judgment to choose a “kidding” way.
In the Greatest, the MV gives great visual impact through bizarre color contrast – the somber blue, grey, and the bloody red. There are steel bars and dark rooms to represent the struggle, while there is also light to represent freedom. The 49 dancers that appeared in the music video represented the 49 victims in the “Orlando nightclub shooting” case. The MV here looks like a stage play and represented the shooting scenes inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016. In Walter Benjamin’s opinion [1], in modern society, the development of technologies made new media become the main method of distributing art. Thus, people’s way of experiencing art was influenced. Totally different from the traditional way of enjoying art – by feeling the aura through the unique existence and authenticity, the combination of reality and fiction, static and dynamic scenes represented the original tragedy artistically, leaving the audience a livelier aesthetic experience. At the same time, musical videos are similar to micro films, which are “brain-washing”. Once musical videos are released and distributed online, thousands or millions of people, who will be guided by the message the videos tend to convey, gain access to them. Therefore, music videos can be driving. Some are made only for benefits by hiring astonishing cast or putting lots of commercial elements, while others can be of public social benefit culturally or economically. As far as I am concerned, MV of the Greatest played its role at the bright side. It is in honor of the loss of 49 lives and calls on unbiased treatment for LGBT group.
The two music videos share the physical and mental state of being victims in vulnerable groups. In Chandelier, the setting is a shabby and dim apartment, which suggests a terrible growing environment of juvenile victims. The movement of imitating someone else pulling her hair implied suffering of violence. The exaggerated and dramatic dancing movements implies the maltreatment from her father. With the assistance of long-shot, the storytelling performance was extremely smooth and kept the attention of the audience. At last, the girl twisted her body in front of the camera with a quirky smile. The shocking and powerful pattern makes the audience think further, feel uncomfortable, confused, uneasy about the ending and remember it instead of feeling nothing but “good” as soon as they take off the earphones.
The Greatest is much easier to understand. The rainbow tears on the leading dancer’s face suggested their identities – the LGBT group. At the ending of the music video, she suddenly opened her eyes while lying among the “corpses” of other 48 dancers and stared fixedly at the lens with resentment and coolness. This can be interpreted as the resentment for those discriminators and the firmness and tenacity of the whole group.
The debut of The Greatest is two years later than that of Chandelier, thus, the slight transition can be sensed here. For Chandelier, the MV helps to deepen the connotation of the song, but the interpretation of the song varies from individual to individual, which is to say, it is subjective and niche. A niche community can understand the profound meaning [2]. But just enjoying the dance and lyrics of the song has already realized most of its function. After all, it was used as the background music of Victoria’s Secret Show. For the Greatest, the MV was made to represent the tragic incident through storytelling with an obvious theme – to encourage and speak for the LGBT group. It is more commercial and the style is going to more “popular music”, which can be understood by the public.
References
[1] Benjamin, W. (1936). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Visual Culture: Experiences in Visual Culture.
[2] Petrusich, A. (2016). The music critic in the age of the insta-release. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-music-critic-in-the-age-of-the-insta-release
[3] Sontag, S. (1964). Notes on camp. Retrieved from https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html.
but MV is for both
By XINYI WU | October 9, 2019
The two music videos I chose are from the Australian singer, Sia. One is Chandelier and the other is the Greatest. The former is an implication of children and domestic violence, while the latter is based on the tragedy “Orlando nightclub shooting”. After spectators finish watching these videos, it can take them a long time to emotionally recover from the sorrow and distress that these videos may cause. The pattern of these two music videos shed light on the function of art - to shock people. There are users who do not watch musical videos and only listen to the song itself. But through the visual elements of music videos, spectators can further grasp the singer’s intent and have a deeper understanding of the message being transmitted.
(https://youtu.be/2vjPBrBU-TM & https://youtu.be/GKSRyLdjsPA )
In Chandelier, the musical video is a combination of ballet and modern dance performance. It may be kind of disturbing and difficult to understand at the first glance. Young as she was, the 14-year-old dancer, Maddie Ziegler expressed complicated emotions through exaggerated expressions, body language and dramatic and campy [3] ballet performance. Not like high art (fundamentally moralistic) nor like avant-garde art (which discusses the tension between beauty and morality through extreme presentation), I would like to refer to this MV as the third kind of entirely aesthetic art - "camp". Besides this, as Susan Sontag pointed out, camp is unintentional and not trying too hard. Sia once talked about her intentions of music videos. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2-tPcQaSa0) She said: “One thing I liked about making the videos with Maddie (the dancer in Chandelier) was that it showed little kids new ways to express themselves that were not already established. It just sort of felt like it is free to be a weirdo, you know? And I liked that.” On this level, she did not mean to convey the message in purpose. It is the spectators and listeners who can get the message themselves. The seemingly relaxing and joking video somehow points to a serious social issue, bypassing moral judgment to choose a “kidding” way.
In the Greatest, the MV gives great visual impact through bizarre color contrast – the somber blue, grey, and the bloody red. There are steel bars and dark rooms to represent the struggle, while there is also light to represent freedom. The 49 dancers that appeared in the music video represented the 49 victims in the “Orlando nightclub shooting” case. The MV here looks like a stage play and represented the shooting scenes inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016. In Walter Benjamin’s opinion [1], in modern society, the development of technologies made new media become the main method of distributing art. Thus, people’s way of experiencing art was influenced. Totally different from the traditional way of enjoying art – by feeling the aura through the unique existence and authenticity, the combination of reality and fiction, static and dynamic scenes represented the original tragedy artistically, leaving the audience a livelier aesthetic experience. At the same time, musical videos are similar to micro films, which are “brain-washing”. Once musical videos are released and distributed online, thousands or millions of people, who will be guided by the message the videos tend to convey, gain access to them. Therefore, music videos can be driving. Some are made only for benefits by hiring astonishing cast or putting lots of commercial elements, while others can be of public social benefit culturally or economically. As far as I am concerned, MV of the Greatest played its role at the bright side. It is in honor of the loss of 49 lives and calls on unbiased treatment for LGBT group.
The two music videos share the physical and mental state of being victims in vulnerable groups. In Chandelier, the setting is a shabby and dim apartment, which suggests a terrible growing environment of juvenile victims. The movement of imitating someone else pulling her hair implied suffering of violence. The exaggerated and dramatic dancing movements implies the maltreatment from her father. With the assistance of long-shot, the storytelling performance was extremely smooth and kept the attention of the audience. At last, the girl twisted her body in front of the camera with a quirky smile. The shocking and powerful pattern makes the audience think further, feel uncomfortable, confused, uneasy about the ending and remember it instead of feeling nothing but “good” as soon as they take off the earphones.
The Greatest is much easier to understand. The rainbow tears on the leading dancer’s face suggested their identities – the LGBT group. At the ending of the music video, she suddenly opened her eyes while lying among the “corpses” of other 48 dancers and stared fixedly at the lens with resentment and coolness. This can be interpreted as the resentment for those discriminators and the firmness and tenacity of the whole group.
The debut of The Greatest is two years later than that of Chandelier, thus, the slight transition can be sensed here. For Chandelier, the MV helps to deepen the connotation of the song, but the interpretation of the song varies from individual to individual, which is to say, it is subjective and niche. A niche community can understand the profound meaning [2]. But just enjoying the dance and lyrics of the song has already realized most of its function. After all, it was used as the background music of Victoria’s Secret Show. For the Greatest, the MV was made to represent the tragic incident through storytelling with an obvious theme – to encourage and speak for the LGBT group. It is more commercial and the style is going to more “popular music”, which can be understood by the public.
References
[1] Benjamin, W. (1936). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Visual Culture: Experiences in Visual Culture.
[2] Petrusich, A. (2016). The music critic in the age of the insta-release. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-music-critic-in-the-age-of-the-insta-release
[3] Sontag, S. (1964). Notes on camp. Retrieved from https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html.
Xinyi, I really appreciated this post and the exploration of music videos an important form of pop culture. I agree that artists like Sia have taken this relatively modern style of art and used it to make impactful statements about the dangers of the world and political climate around us. I think that the most important part of Sia's music videos is the fact that she uses imagery to rather than words to convey her message, and therefore encourages viewers to develop their own theoretical words or thoughts about the scenarios and issues that the videos describe. While Chandelier may have a lyric or two that allude to child abuse or improper upbringing, The Greatest has no lyrics that explicitly state that shes talking about gun violence or discrimination towards the LGBTQ+ community. She instead uses dance, coloristic expression, and other art forms in order to create an image that entices viewers even if they are not particularly looking for political statements or information about the tragic event. From there, she calls upon the audience to evaluate their own feelings about the tragedy. I think that in this way she perfectly exemplifies Walter Benjamin’s principle of the media giving its audience agency. By creating a music video on such a chilling and tragic topic and releasing it on a public platform like Youtube, Sia gave her fans the chance to express their feelings about the Pulse shooting or other incidences of mass shootings and discrimination through the video’s comments section or by creating their own “reviews” or reactions to the video. I think that her goal when creating the music video was to pay homage to the Pulse victims, but also force people who previously felt somewhat unaffected by the shooting to feel a deeper sense of morning and outrage over the senseless murders and misery that came of this tragedy and others like it. In 2016, the year of the Pulse shooting and The Greatest music video, there was 382 mass shootings (Gunviolencearchive.org, 2019), with one or more happening every day of the year. Under such circumstances, it was most likely easy for the general public to feel a sense of numbness or desire to forget towards such instances, especially when the majority of victims come from a minority group (like the LGBTQ+) that they may not necessarily identify with. The Greatest music video, by being released on a public platform as a pop culture medium that makes people want to watch it, shines a spotlight on a tragedy who's victims deserve to be remembered and advocated for in the future just as much as anyone else.
ReplyDeleteWorks Cited:
Benjamin, W. (1936). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproductionPreview the document. Visual Culture: Experiences in Visual Culture.
Gunviolencearchive.org. (2019). Gun Violence Archive. [online] Available at: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ [Accessed 24 Nov. 2019].
Xinyi provides a very detailed juxtaposition of the two music videos by Sia sheds light on the particular visual elements that highlight the thematic messages portrayed regarding vulnerable groups like the LGBT community and juvenile victims. Xinyi touches on different aspects of the two music videos “Chandelier” and “The Greatest”-- the aesthetics, camp-y components, and larger social messages illustrated. While sometimes the meanings of the videos may not be clearly apparent in the beginning, visual cues in the video allow the viewers to generate their own connections and “see” the message for themselves (the Orlando nightclub shooting incident for example and LGBT activism). I would also like to connect Xinyi’s post and discussion on these messages to Zeisler’s statement that popular culture is inherently political. Zeisler states that “pop culture informs our understanding of political issues that on first glance seem to have nothing to do with pop culture” (Zeisler, 2008, p.7). Sia’s music videos, and any music video for that matter, can be viewed as something for “pure entertainment”, but this form of entertainment can have “everything to do with politics”. While Zeisler primarily makes this argument with regards to feminism, this idea is certainly reflected in Sia’s two videos “Chandelier” and “The Greatest” which have underlying political messages in its narrative elements. The videos present a specific viewpoint on these political issues and as Xinyi states, when these videos and messages are viewed and consumed by the public, the videos become a driving force with particular social roles and significance to the audience members.
ReplyDeleteZeisler, A. (2008). Pop and circumstance: Why pop culture matters. In Feminism and pop culture (pp.1-21). New York, NY: Seal Press.
-ROBIN HU
Great blog post Xinyi! I thought that your in-depth analysis of two of Sia’s music videos was well-thought and excellently written. These two videos in particular, Chandelier and the Greatest, obviously stood out to you because of their societal and political impact on the audience. Both domestic abuse and gun violence are unfortunately ever prevalent in today’s society. Sia is known for her “weirdly” artistic music videos, that you identified to be considered camp. That is a great connection between the topic and the readings learned in class. The themes and symbolism in both videos stand out to the audience and allows the artist to subtly make a monumental statement. Similarly, the “This is America” music video, by Childish Gambino, was full of symbolism that referenced gun violence and “trigger happy” America. I believe that influential artists have an obligation to take a stance and stand up for what is right in society if they have the platform to do so. The connections that you identified between these two videos, such as their representation of the oppressed and vulnerable, were on point and interesting. Your reference to Walter Benjamin and how aura and authenticity are shown through music videos and sometimes are used to increase aura was also unique and an excellent analysis. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog and thought that it was extremely interesting. Despite not being a huge Sia fan, I am now intrigued by her subtle activism and work that is displayed in her music videos.
ReplyDelete[1] Benjamin, W. (1936). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Visual Culture: Experiences in Visual Culture.
- Drew Schwartz