Wow! eBook
Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones
Author(s): Roger Beebe (Editor), Jason Middleton
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication Date: September 26, 2007
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 360 pages
- ISBN-10: 082234162X
- ISBN-13: 9780822341628
Book Description
The essays take on a range of topics, including questions of authenticity, the tension between high-art influences and mass-cultural appeal, the prehistory of music video, and the production and dissemination of music videos outside the United States. Among the thirteen essays are a consideration of how the rapper Jay-Z uses music video as the primary site for performing, solidifying, and discarding his various personas; an examination of the recent emergence of indigenous music video production in Papua New Guinea; and an analysis of the cultural issues being negotiated within Finland’s developing music video industry. Contributors explore precursors to contemporary music videos, including 1950s music television programs such as American Bandstand, Elvis’s internationally broadcast 1973 Aloha from Hawaii concert, and different types of short musical films that could be viewed in “musical jukeboxes” of the 1940s and 1960s. Whether theorizing music video in connection to postmodernism or rethinking the relation between sound and the visual image, the essays in Medium Cool reveal music video as rich terrain for further scholarly investigation.
Contributors. Roger Beebe, Norma Coates, Kay Dickinson, Cynthia Fuchs, Philip Hayward, Amy Herzog, Antti-Ville Kärjä, Melissa McCartney, Jason Middleton, Lisa Parks, Kip Pegley, Maureen Turim, Carol Vernallis, Warren Zanes
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton’s
Medium Cool is a valuable and timely anthology that moves the scholarly discussion of music video beyond MTV, exploring the past, present, and future of the medium. It also introduces readers to important new voices in music and media studies.”—Gayle F. Wald, author of Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe“This lively collection brings music video studies up to date and expands its analytical horizons. One of the book’s great strengths is the methodological clarity of the articles assembled here, making this a very useful collection for teaching purposes. Even more impressively, this book moves beyond MTV in several important directions. It charts the international circulation of music video, provides background on understudied historical ancestors of the video clip, and introduces readers to emerging genres of audiovisual expression. This volume will be the new standard work on music video.”—Will Straw, author of
Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America“
Medium Cool will be indispensable for those studying music video, as well as of interest to anyone interested the effect the internet and third generation mobile phone technologies on how audio-visual material is accessed. It may also be of general interest to fans of the music video form, and the fact that many of the videos analysed in Medium Cool are available on YouTube makes reading this book a great pleasure. This, as much as anything else, marks this book as initiating a new era in music video scholarship.” — Matthew Campora ― M/C Reviews“The essays are intriguing and draw on a combination of music-video scholarship, television studies, popular music studies, and popular musicology. . . . This is a book for those interested in intersections between music and visual cultures and aesthetics. Highly recommended.” — M. Goldsmith ―
Choice“Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton’s omnibus of thought-provoking—and in several cases canon-altering—essays are poised to correct the ‘‘myopia’’ of long-entrenched scholarship on the music video. . . . This is a refreshing and pleasurable compilation which should revitalize and reposition discussions of the music video.” — Michael T. Spencer ―
Popular Music and Society“This book, well documented and carefully edited, seems to be a major contribution to the literature of popular music and its visual forms. One comes away from it with a greater appreciation for the innovativeness and the challenges involved with this art form.” — Jack Estes ―
Journal of American CultureAbout the Author
Roger Beebe is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the English Department at the University of Florida. He is a coeditor of Rock Over the Edge: Transformations in Popular Music Culture, also published by Duke University Press.
Jason Middleton is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the English Department at the University of Rochester.
