By Lai Wei 33870474

Music videos have long occupied an unstable position within screen media. Emerging as promotional tools for recorded music, they quickly developed into a hybrid form that combined commercial imperatives with aesthetic experimentation. The MTV era of the 1980s and 1990s marked a crucial moment in this history, establishing music video as a dominant audiovisual format organized around television flow, repetition, and celebrity visibility. However, the contemporary shift toward digital platforms and social networks has profoundly reconfigured how music videos are produced, circulated, and experienced.

As Gina Arnold and her co-authors argue, music videos should not be understood as a medium that declined after MTV, but as a form that has continued and transformed across technological regimes (Arnold et al., 2017). Many of the formal qualities associated with MTV—rapid editing, non-linear structure, visual excess, and rhythmic montage—anticipated the logic of digital media long before social platforms emerged. In this sense, music videos functioned as a testing ground for audiovisual styles that would later become central to networked screen culture.

Carole Vernallis conceptualizes this through what she terms the “second aesthetic” of music video. Unlike classical cinema, which prioritizes narrative continuity and spatial coherence, music videos often organize meaning through rhythm, texture, and affective flow (Vernallis, 2013). Shots may not logically connect, spaces frequently dissolve, and repetition replaces progression. This aesthetic aligns closely with contemporary digital viewing environments, where looping clips, fragmented attention, and algorithmic feeds privilege sensation over narrative closure.

Released without prior announcement, the video bypassed traditional television distribution and circulated primarily through online platforms. While it retains certain MTV-era conventions—high production value, strong star presence—it also operates within a networked media ecology. The video’s dense visual references, abrupt tonal shifts, and striking tableaux are designed not for linear broadcast viewing, but for replay, screenshotting, and online debate.

Rather than telling a coherent story, Formation accumulates meaning through juxtaposition. Images of Black Southern history, police violence, and luxury consumption coexist without clear narrative resolution. This structure reflects what Vernallis describes as an affective logic: the video does not guide viewers toward a single interpretation, but produces intensity through visual contrast and rhythmic organization. Meaning emerges through circulation and repetition across social networks, not through narrative explanation.

Daniel Cookney’s discussion of user-generated music videos further clarifies this shift. On platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, music videos are no longer exclusively authored by record labels or directors. Fans remix, reinterpret, and recontextualize music, producing videos that privilege mood, texture, and affect over star visibility (Cookney, 2017). In this environment, music video becomes less a fixed text than a flexible cultural process shaped by platform infrastructures.

From MTV to TikTok, music videos have thus moved from broadcast flow to networked circulation. What persists is not a specific distribution model, but an aesthetic orientation toward affect, repetition, and sensory intensity. Music videos continue to shape how we engage with sound and image, not by telling stories, but by training viewers to navigate fragmented, rhythmic, and highly mediated screen environments.

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References

Arnold, G., Cookney, D., Fairclough, K., & Goddard, M. (2017). “Introduction: Music Video from MTV to 21st-Century Social Media.” In Music/Video: History, Aesthetics, Media, pp. 1–14.

Vernallis, C. (2013). “The Second Aesthetic of Music Video.” In Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and New Digital Cinema, pp. 207–233.

Cookney, D. (2017). “Vimeo Killed the Video Star.” In Music/Video: History, Aesthetics, Media, pp. 255–267.

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