David Fincher may be best known for his award-winning psychological thrillers but there’s much to be said about the unique style he developed during his early years as a Music Video Director. In this blog, I analyse his approach to music videos and the insight it provides us into the relationship between audio and visuals. 

Madonna’s Vogue is the perfect example for this purpose. In the music video, Madonna sings about the LGBTQ+ ballroom phenomenon of ‘Voguing’ which is a dance form that includes striking poses akin to those of models in popular magazines. The black-and-white video took inspiration directly from the pages of the fashion magazines (Liam Hess, 2020), the Golden Age of Hollywood and Art Deco, the art-style associated with 1920s and 1930s.

The video starts with four diverse characters in suits imitating the statues that surround them. As Madonna’s bejewelled back appears on screen, these ‘statues’ or characters emerge striking various poses. The camera moves with a gentle, flowy tracking movement and the use of morphing transitions add to the continuity of the scenes. From the very first beat, each dance move is synced perfectly and so is each cut. Even the scene where a museum staffer is brushing off dust from a railing is synced to beat. 

The randomness or what some would call the abstractness of today’s pop videos is amiss in Fincher’s approach as he is meticulous in giving each line of the song its due in the visuals supporting it. The backgrounds in the video are also of note with various textures (such as that of a brick wall and that of crumpled paper) to enhance the black and white contrast of the video. When the beats get faster so do his cuts with precise attention to the emotion each visual is supposed to evoke. 

This is in line with Nicholas Cook’s definition of the interaction between music and images: images and visuals have a tendency to complement, conformance, and contrast each other in music videos. Here, Fincher makes the artistic call to heighten the viewer’s emotion towards the music with visuals that match or replicate the mood, rhythm and narrative of the song. 

While the artistic inspiration (that of the 1920s) may allude us to the music video aesthetics of Vogue, this is where Vernallis’ model comes handy. Vernallis mentions that the eighties and nineties were a ‘hotbed for colour experimentation’ – we see an example of this with the K-scope technique in Vogue where Fincher defocuses the highlights electronically which Joseph Kahn calls ‘state-of-the-art’ for that time. The K-scope technique is what makes Madonna’s skin and hair look extra bright throughout the video.

Performance takes the cake in all Madonna videos. In Vogue, most of the video comprises voguing and Fincher uses extreme close-ups of Madonna to emphasise on her various poses (most of which emulate Photographer Horst’s work). Madonna throws in several elements of self-branding with props such as cat-themed decor, nude sculptures, her fascination with ‘suits’ which may be a symbol for female empowerment as in her previous videos.

In conclusion, Vernallis’ model of understanding the relationship of audio and visual through various factors such as performance, setting, rhythm, timbre, technology, colour and so forth give us a broader view to examine the nature and ever-evolving characteristics of music videos. It can be said then without doubt that audio and visual may as well be treated as spouses in couple’s therapy. And in the case of Vogue, we see this happen through not spouses but the collaborative work of Fincher and Madonna.

References:

Herzog, A., Richardson, J., & Vernallis, C. (2015). The Oxford handbook of sound and image in digital media. Oxford Univ. Press.

Madonna. (2009). Madonna – Vogue (Official Music Video) [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJQSAiODqI

Hollywood Director Analyzes Greatest Music Videos Ever. (n.d.). http://Www.youtube.com. Retrieved December 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv3z82SSAcU

Hess, L. (2020, March 27). Why Madonna’s “Vogue” Is Still Relevant 30 Years Later. Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/madonna-vogue-video-30th-anniversary

Written by Ridhima Chatterjee