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.
Carol Vernallis is an Affiliated Researcher at Stanford University, author of Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema and Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context, and coeditor of, most recently, Cybermedia: Explorations in Science, Sound, and Vision.
Acknowledgments xiA Note on the Cover xiiiIntroduction 1I. Post-Classical Cinema at the Limit1. Partying in The Great Gatsby: Baz Luhrmann’s Audovisual Sublime 272. Shattered Pleasures: Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction 48II. Music Video and the Art-Video Border3. BeyoncÉ’s Overwhelming Opus; or, the Past and Future of Music Video 714. Avant-Gardists and the Lure of Pop Music 975. BeyoncÉ’s Lemonade: She Dreams in Both Worlds (Carol Vernallis, Lisa Perrot, and Holly Rogers) 1226. Tracing the Carters through the Galleries: “APES**T/APESHIT” and the Louvre 1387. Storytelling on the Ledge: Lady Gaga and Jonas Åkerlund’s “Paparazzi” 154III. Music Video’s Late Late Style8. How to Analyze Music Videos: BeyoncÉ and Melina Matsoukas’s “Pretty Hurts” 1759. Dave Meyer’s Moments of Audiovisual Bliss 19610. Janelle MonÁe’s “You Make Me Feel” and Anderson.Paak with Kendrick Lamar’s “Tints”: Getting Up in My [Rearview] Mirror 211IV. Audiovisual Aesthetics Online11. Who Needs Music Documentaries When There’s TikTok and Carpool Karaoke? 23112. TikTok and Costume-Drama Mashups on YouTube 247V. New Modes of Analysis: Industry13. The Art of Color Grading (Carol Vernallis, Jonathan Leal, Eric Weldt, and Aubrey Woodiwiss) 26514. Music Video Directors, Production Houses, and the Media Swirl 290VI. New Modes of Analysis: Neuroscience15. Music Video’s Multisensory 30716. Tracing the Asset: Humanistic and Quantitative Approaches to Cybercrime Film Trailers (Snowden and Bourne) 319VII. New Modes of Analysis: Politics and Vernacular Culture17. New Technologies, Social Justice, and the Future in BeyoncÉ’s Audiovisual Albums 33518. Fox News, COVID-19, Brief Media Aesthetics, and Historical Resonances 356Afterword 369Notes 373Bibliography 403Index 429