Television, Esthetics and Video Clips: Popular Music Expressed in Images

Abstract

For quite some time, according to Arlindo Machado, those who theorize about communication accustomed us to approaching television as a popular, mass medium (in the worst sense). This overshadowed the attention that could have been given to certain interesting, unique and very significant expressions of television to define the statute of this medium in contemporary culture. And, it is precisely in the privileged place for the contemporary expression of light; that is, on the television screen, where the subject of this study is found. That subject is pop music videos. Their esthetic dimension is examined in relation to the elements that constitute their nature: the singer and all his or her gestural paraphernalia, the clothing and the settings where the story unfolds. A specific way to be in the space or deco-gramma is presented, along with a list of technological resources that make it possible to establish a particular kind of register: a techno-gramma or fractured image in the improvisation of a genre which, in the Coffee Region, in Colombia, besides being well produced and circulated in an almost industrial way, is also generating unprecedented marketing dynamics and exposure for singers. In short, this is a study on pop music being circulated via the most popular medium of all: television.