Death of the Video Star

Too hot for MTV: The video for the the Strokes' Juicebox, directed by Michael Palmieri. Courtesy Sony BMG Music.

Nothing raises an artist’s ire like a censorship battle. On Jan. 3, the Strokes released their third album, First Impressions of Earth. Expectations were partially fuelled by director Michael Palmieri’s video for the first single, Juicebox. Along with images of the New York musicians performing another of their taut, speedy, mumbly rock tunes, the montage includes French-kissing female models, guy hipsters going at it in a bathroom stall and a posh senior scrubbing a floor with champagne while a dog (and comedian David Cross) look on.

MTV reacted to this provocation by refusing to air the video without extensive edits. In a rant on his website, Palmieri vented his disgust at what he perceived to be MTV’s double standard, pointing out that the network has never censored the sight of Christina Aguilera shaking “her booty with a gaffer-taped thong two inches from the camera for three minutes.” His vision desecrated, Palmieri took his name off the video.

The fracas attracted attention in the blogosphere and among the Strokes’ (dwindling) circle of fans, but it didn’t make a hit out of Juicebox, as a controversial video might have done in the past. It did, however, generate major publicity for Palmieri.

While music videos have declined in value as promotional tools, they have fuelled the profiles of a new school of short-form auteurs, to the point where their works can now be savoured in a more rarefied context than in the frenetic flow on music channels. Since 2003, Palm Pictures’ prestigious Directors Label DVD series has compiled videos and ads by celebrated music-video directors like Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Jonathan Glazer, many of whom have made the transition to feature filmmaking. (A new set of compilations, for Glazer, Mark Romanek, Stephane Sedanoui and Anton Corbijn, was released in Canada in December.) The idea that discerning music fans would spend money on a collection of pop-music promos would’ve amused Frank Zappa, who once described MTV as the first network to play commercials 24 hours a day. Now people are buying those commercials, or at least seeking them out online.

Though everyone from the Beatles to Nancy Sinatra to David Bowie made short-form promos before MTV, the video age as we know it was launched in August of 1981, when the network aired its first cut, the Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star. Due to a scarcity of videos for MTV to play, artists who were savvy about the possibilities of the new medium gained prominence very rapidly; Duran Duran, Culture Club and Billy Idol were among the first to capitalize. Such was the hunger for videos that Devo and yes, even Frank Zappa scored on MTV. Madonna became the quintessential star of the video age by soft-selling sex along with her perky dance tunes.

Before he became really scary: The video for Michael Jackson's Thriller, directed by John Landis. Courtesy Sony BMG Music (Canada).

Throughout the video’s golden age, directors attracted little attention. The medium’s biggest innovators — like Kevin Godley and Lol Crème, two musicians who’d been in the British pop band 10cc and shot groundbreaking clips for Duran Duran’s Girls on Film and Herbie Hancock’s Rockit — were seldom given credit for their clients’ success. Though Hollywood veterans occasionally made videos (e.g., John Landis with Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Martin Scorsese with Jackson’s Bad), the flow of talent usually ran in the other direction, as hot video directors like Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and David Fincher (Seven) eventually graduated to features.

While the world of music videos remains a training ground for new talent and technologies, the video itself is being crowded out of its traditional context. Following the lead of MTV and VH-1 in the U.S., MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic’s schedules are now dominated by reality shows about the Simpson sisters and Flavor Flav, celeb-laden infotainment programs and list shows full of pop-culture pundits (myself included). Both channels still feature videos but they’ve been pushed to the programming margins or chopped into snippets.

Currently being retooled by new licence owner CTV, MTV Canada is planning the same diet of youth-targeted lifestyle programming, minimizing the musical content of what used to be music television. For casual viewers of the major music stations, it’s become increasingly difficult to happen upon even the videos that are supposed to be in high rotation. If you really want to see an artist’s latest video (especially without the overdubbed voice of a sarcastic sock puppet), you’re better off subscribing to a digital channel, visiting the artist’s website or even downloading it from iTunes (which now sells hit music videos for $1.99).

Meanwhile, record companies have grown wary of gambling huge sums on videos that may or may not earn a berth in video stations’ shrinking playlists. Big-budget videos like Mark Romanek’s clip for Michael and Janet Jackson’s Scream (1995) — which cost a reported US$7 million, and still looked dreadful — are a thing of the past. The music industry’s financial downturn has further compounded the suspicion that videos are an expensive extravagance with limited use. For new and smaller artists, the video remains a valuable promotional tool, but its efficacy is harder to gauge. Video exposure fuelled countless one-hit wonders through the ’80s and ’90s, from Trio’s Da Da Da to the New Radicals’ You Get What You Give. Nowadays, inclusion on The O.C. soundtrack or a hot DJ mixtape is a more viable route to stardom.

As the influence of music videos has waned, the profile of those who make them has risen greatly. A series like the Directors Label was inevitable, given the increased fame of the medium’s new auteurs. These DVD compilations have bolstered the reputation of such directors as Gondry, who is revered as much for his White Stripes videos as he is for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (Not that Gondry doesn’t run into trouble with clients: in November, Kanye West rejected Gondry’s clip for Heard ’Em Say and hired animator Bill Plympton instead.)

Modern troubadours: The video for the Arcade Fire's Rebellion (Lies), directed by Chris Grismer. Courtesy Merge Records/Spy Entertainment.

The recent vogue for Canadian indie-rock artists has been a boon for Toronto directors Chris Grismer (whose videography includes the Arcade Fire's Rebellion (Lies) and Death From Above 1979’s frenetic Romantic Rights) and George Vale (who created the latest Broken Social Scene video). The format has also been rocked by upstarts like the American team Kuntz & Maguire and the Swedish collective Traktor.

Traktor’s ad work and daffy clips for Basement Jaxx and Prodigy earned it a recent retrospective at RES FEST, a travelling festival that showcases the most radical work in animation, short film, advertising and music video. (RES FEST came through Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver in the fall.) Another retrospective subject was Beck, an artist who has long understood the value of potent imagery. Beck’s enduring savvy with videos, however, may not halt his commercial slide.

Over the course of his career, Beck has worked with the hippest directors, including Jonze, Palmieri, Romanek and Gondry. For his most recent video, Hell Yes, he collaborated with Garth Jennings. A veteran video maker (as half of the British duo Hammer & Tongs), Jennings recently followed his peers’ lead, by helming the full-length film The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Featuring a charming dance routine by a quartet of Sony’s QRIO robots, the Hell Yes clip is everything a video should be: witty, innovative and deftly paced. But as with the Strokes’ Juicebox, it’s more of a testament to the imaginative skills of director Jennings than Beck, whose album Guero has met only middling success.

It’s fitting that the musician is portrayed in Hell Yes as a flickering hologram easily upstaged by his mechanical co-stars. Though music videos still have the power to dazzle, the artists they’re ostensibly promoting are no longer the centre of attention.

Jason Anderson is a writer based in Toronto.

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