Press Pause: Critically Contextualizing Music Video in Visual Culture and Art Education

Abstract

Music video is one of the most influential visual culture forms to hit youth culture since the advent of television. Although provocative, the value of studying such visual culture as the music video in art education is much more than providing mere spectacle or motivational tactic. As many teenagers know, music videos portray meaning. They provoke, sell, promote, and tell stories through densely textured images and sound. They are exciting, dramatic forms of art that are in their own right an excellent source of learning as well as a provocative link to more traditional artistic forms. Like any form of art and educational experience, music video, as well as other visual culture studies, requires meaningful contextual research and analysis as well as alternative approaches to what we think about, teach, and learn in art education. In a quest for a critical, comprehensive, and contextual approach to music video analysis and interpretation, this article examines and correlates theories of critical pedagogy, visual culture art education, and music video. Commensurately, it explores Radiohead's music video entitled Go to Sleep (Radiohead, 2002) and shares descriptions of specific art classroom practice utilizing music videos.