Full Description
From fan-generated content on TikTok to music videos, the contemporary media landscape is becoming ever more vast, spectacular, and intense. In The Media Swirl Carol Vernallis examines short-form audiovisual media-BeyoncÉ's Lemonade, brief sequences from Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, TikTok challenges, YouTube mashups, commercials, and many other examples-to offer ways of understanding digital media. She analyzes music videos by BeyoncÉ, Lady Gaga, Janelle MonÁe, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, and others to outline how sound and image enhance each other and shape a viewer's mood. Responding to today's political-media landscape through discussions of Fox News and Presidential inaugurations, Vernallis shows how a media literacy that exceeds newscasts and campaign advertising is central to engaging with the democratic commons. Forays into industry studies, neuroscience, and ethics also inform her readings. By creating our own content and knowing what corporations, the wealthy, and the government do through media, Vernallis contends, we can create a more just world.
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
A Note on the Cover xiii
Introduction 1
I. Post-Classical Cinema at the Limit
1. Partying in The Great Gatsby: Baz Luhrmann's Audovisual Sublime 27
2. Shattered Pleasures: Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction 48
II. Music Video and the Art-Video Border
3. BeyoncÉ's Overwhelming Opus; or, the Past and Future of Music Video 71
4. Avant-Gardists and the Lure of Pop Music 97
5. BeyoncÉ's Lemonade: She Dreams in Both Worlds (Carol Vernallis, Lisa Perrot, and Holly Rogers) 122
6. Tracing the Carters through the Galleries: "APES**T/APESHIT" and the Louvre 138
7. Storytelling on the Ledge: Lady Gaga and Jonas Åkerlund's "Paparazzi" 154
III. Music Video's Late Late Style
8. How to Analyze Music Videos: BeyoncÉ and Melina Matsoukas's "Pretty Hurts" 175
9. Dave Meyer's Moments of Audiovisual Bliss 196
10. Janelle MonÁe's "You Make Me Feel" and Anderson.Paak with Kendrick Lamar's "Tints": Getting Up in My [Rearview] Mirror 211
IV. Audiovisual Aesthetics Online
11. Who Needs Music Documentaries When There's TikTok and Carpool Karaoke? 231
12. TikTok and Costume-Drama Mashups on YouTube 247
V. New Modes of Analysis: Industry
13. The Art of Color Grading (Carol Vernallis, Jonathan Leal, Eric Weldt, and Aubrey Woodiwiss) 265
14. Music Video Directors, Production Houses, and the Media Swirl 290
VI. New Modes of Analysis: Neuroscience
15. Music Video's Multisensory 307
16. Tracing the Asset: Humanistic and Quantitative Approaches to Cybercrime Film Trailers (Snowden and Bourne) 319
VII. New Modes of Analysis: Politics and Vernacular Culture
17. New Technologies, Social Justice, and the Future in BeyoncÉ's Audiovisual Albums 335
18. Fox News, COVID-19, Brief Media Aesthetics, and Historical Resonances 356
Afterword 369
Notes 373
Bibliography 403
Index 429
