Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema

Carol Vernallis was already the best scholar of music video, and I’ve waited eagerly for this new book. In Unruly Media she offers a sharp, ground-breaking account of what happens when the boundaries between film, video and digital media are criss-crossed in a myriad of interesting ways. ― Will Straw, Professor of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University

Carol Vernallis’s work on soundtracks in digital media seems to me the most exciting commentary on sound/image relationship since Michel Chion’s Voice in Cinema. When I read one of Carol’s virtuoso treatments of moment-to-moment musical shaping of image reception, I often feel that I have barely attended to sound components at all. Her jazzy prose has an exultant, frequently hallucinatory vividness that takes you all the way in to whatever experience she’s describing. It is rare to find film (much less music video) criticism that delights and instructs, as Carol’s does, in equal measure. ― George Toles, University of Manitoba

Full of flair, unexpected twists and non-linear asides, Unruly Media resembles the unique flow of new audiovisual media, inviting the reader to assemble the parts herself and become part of this post-classical scholarship. ― Twentieth Century Music

Carol’s in-depth analysis of music-video culture and its fate is an eye-opening look into pop culture. It is an engrossing and thought-provoking read–worth checking out. ― Jonas Akerlund, director of Spun, Small Apartments, Beyonce’s “Haunted” and “Superpower,” and Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” and “Telephone”.