Anthropolojests

I really like watching music videos. I used to do this when I was younger and when you could find music videos on television, but around college this stopped. I’m not sure why. Artists still made videos, but the chance they would air on television and on major entertainment networks became rarer as the programming for these channels shifted to reality TV. I recall how music videos were soon relegated to the late-night hours of broadcasting and eventually, in the case of channels like MTV, were only available if one had expensive cable plans with MTV3, MTV4, or international MTV subsidiaries.

In 2015 I began to watch music videos again. The growth of video posting websites like Youtube and Vevo meant that videos were readily available. Without large, television networks serving as gatekeepers, artists could post their videos freely. Video production also became cheaper which gave lesser known artists the chance to make really innovative videos at a fraction of what it used to cost. I immediately noticed how much things had changed in the course of a decade. The video quality was better, the storylines and artistic direction were more sophisticated, and the diversity of different voices, looks, and styles was inspiring. This wasn’t just true of the indie artists and international musicians I enjoyed but was also true of top 40 artists who seemed to be making videos for their fans rather than the networks.

I’m definitely not the first to notice that music videos are a lot better than they used to be. Beyonce’s epic video for her album “Lemonade” captured critical attention, but other videos of recent memory show the range of creativity artists are deploying as they experiment with all sorts of imaginative, bizarre, and inspiring representations. One that I can’t stop watching is the 15-minute video for Tierra Whack’s 2018 album Whack World in which the album’s 15, one-minute tracks are separated into short, comedic, perplexing, and thought-provoking vignettes.

A few weeks ago, I went ahead and watched some of the videos I remember from the late 90s and early 2000s. They haven’t aged well. They’re uncreative, boring, and in a lot of cases would offend the sensibilities of a 2019 audience. It’s strange because this was a time in music video history when artists were spending a lot of money on video production. In fact, if you look at the Wikipedia list for “most expensive music videos” it’s clear that outside of a few exceptions, this period in music video making is exceptional for the number of videos where artists spend over a million dollars. And yet the quality of the videos is abysmal, so bad perhaps, that it’s no wonder MTV and others transitioned their programming to reality TV.

But it’s not just music videos that are going through a creative renaissance; apparently, it’s all forms of entertainment media. Some say we live in a “golden age” of television, our access to a diverse array of music is more open than ever, and with the advent of Netflix and other streaming services, obscure documentaries, low-budget indie films, and a host of international titles are readily available. Of course, it could be better. There’s still a lot of media concentration in the area of print and TV news, major movie studios have been reduced to Superhero films and Star Wars spinoffs, and the major television networks still produce a lot of garbage television. But the fact is that if you don’t want to watch any of that (and I don’t), you don’t have to, there’s so much entertaining, inspired, and artistically driven media out there.

It occurs to me, and this is just speculating from the evolution of music videos, that this kind of creativity in the media is actually only possible so long as artists can avoid having the work with and participate in mainstream media. What Youtube and other online video hosting sites allow artists to do is put their content into the public sphere without having to make too many artistic compromises, without feeling the need to appeal to what media executives think the public wants, and without (to a certain point, I’m sure) having to bow to advertisers. One important implication from all of this is that online media contains a myriad number of different identities, ideas, and representations—far more than what is possible through mainstream channels—which begs the question, why is so much energy spent criticizing legacy media organizations, and media awards shows, for their lack of diversity?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there isn’t merit to asking that mainstream media outlets be more diverse. But normally their attempts to implement diversity fall flat, with artistic vision often sacrificed for predictability and cliché. To me, it seems more important that we work to further decentralize artistic production and remove the power these outlets possess by supporting artists through other channels and protecting the infrastructure that exists (and expanding that infrastructure) to ensure more people can express themselves. The diversity you find on the internet is unparalleled and we already live in a world where if you just wanted to watch movies, shows, or listen to music made by or about people who look like you and share your reality, you can. But you shouldn’t, because there’s so many different things out there to see, so much so that it’s often no wonder people are always on their phones! Frankly, I don’t want to return to a world where legacy media served as an information gatekeeper and I don’t want to return to a world where large television networks decided what the vast majority of people were able to watch. The musical artists I really admire are likely to never win Grammys, but that elite conferral of recognition always comes with a price, and it’s better we reject these institutions rather than attempt to reform them. This isn’t a call for revolution, though, since simply devoting your attention to alternative media representations is precisely what will, over time, bring about this change. That is, if the internet is kept free and made freer.

So the question that looms over all of this is how we ensure the internet remain open and accessible and how we can direct our resources away from mainstream institutions to the content creators, artists, and online personalities that share our values, give voice to our realities, and most importantly, help us to imagine other ways of being in the world?

One solution I’ve heard, and I like, is to give content creators more power over how their content is used by hosting sites. This can include compensating content creators directly and devising models for compensation that don’t rely on advertising revenue. This can also include nationalizing online platforms and giving artists free digital space the same way we subsidize public access television, public radio, and create grants that support artistic work within traditional mediums. There is no real reason Facebook or Youtube need to be privately owned, but there’s also no reason, given their share of users, why a diversity of platforms is ideal either. What Facebook created is owed in large part to the users and content creators who populate the site with fun things to watch, read, and listen to, and they ought to be considered the principle owners of the organization, not Mark Zuckerberg.

Anyway, here are some music videos I’ve enjoyed.

Tierra Whack – Whack World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOTebhPy04g

Helado Negro – See my Aura
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUUtADIn24I

Young Thug – What’s The Move ft. Lil Uzi Vert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L32ZHlOqqGY

Miami Horror – I Look To You (ft. Kimbra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jna2r56EXTg

French 79 – Hometown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAv5pLO37mE