The "MTV Aesthetic"...

I was just reading a chapter titled 'Pop, Speed, Teenagers and the MTV aesthetic' by Kay Dickinson which is a part of the book, 'Movie Music, The Film Reader'. Basically, the chapter talks about the way that Music Videos have shaped the aesthetic of films, most especially those targeted toward the youth. The use of fast paced editing, popular music soundtracks and the montage of otherwise indecipherable images has become a regular and almost expected occurrence in the popular film going experience today and the motivations behind this kind of aesthetic innovation are really quite interesting.

Dickinson talks about how the editing process has been rearranged to fit the tempo of the musical soundtrack despite the difference in the perceptual processes of the ear and the eye – for instance “the ear analyzes, processes and synthesises faster than the eye” and as such is able to be distinguished as more temporally adept as compared to the eye which is spatially adept(Dickinson, 2003: 143).

Yet this apparent incompatibility between the speed with which we are able to process images and sound still manages to work somewhat symbiotically both in music videos and in movies- as well as other visual mediums. For Dickinson the key to this is speed itself. The youth market define themselves through speed – how fast they can drive, how fast they can dance, how fast they can get the job done, the speed of video games, even just the recreational use of the drug, etc. – all culminating in a triumph over and disruption of the order and stability that is defined by the older generations. Furthermore, this ‘need for speed’ particularly in regard to video games does not allow the eye to rest so it becomes used to fast paced images and their rapid interpretation. Another reason that this symbiosis occurs relatively naturally when we are watching these kinds of movies is because the pace of the narrative is sped up to prevent us from getting bored – after all teenagers and some studies have even suggested humans in general have a relatively short attention span so they need to be kept interested in what is happening on screen.

Yet far from being a purely altruistic stylistic innovation this MTV aesthetic has been a commercial tool for the media conglomerates that were formed through horizontal integration of the film, television and music corporations in the 1980s and 1990s (Dickinson, 2003: 145). Economically speaking this means that many bases were able to be covered at once resulting in larger revenues and relatively smaller expenses. Basically, the youth market, their necessity for speed and the popularity of MTV culture and music videos were seen as a viable market to tap into and thus in turn shaped the industry into what it is today.

According to Dickinson this aesthetic change isn't completely bad. In fact it presents various avenues which can be explored in terms of how to go about analysing film from a generational perspective in terms of how differing classes of audiences and consumers can be constructed and how meaning can be derived through the symbiotic use of sound and image. Although I definitely found this to be an interesting read I have to admit that I couldn't help but wonder what Eisenstein would be thinking today if he could see the way that his concepts of montage and editing in order to create deeper meaning had been manipulated to conform to capitalist agendas for relatively superficial purposes.