Why I (still) Want My MTV : Music Video and Aesthetic Communication

This book responds to and elaborates on significant questions concerning the imagery and music in music videos, and proposes a new way of considering music video. It is written in the spirit of communicology and cultural studies: that is, the ways that the products of human communication reveal specific structures of communication and consciousness are studied. These structures of communication reveal much about the way a culture is aware of the world. Rather than providing another interpretation of the meaning of music video, the author seeks instead to provide an explication of music video that is more concerned with what can be called their presentational value and ability to bring to expression, through technology, a cultural vision of human perceptual experience. Music video, it is argued, does not merely present itself, but makes present important aspects of communicative experience, embodiment, technology and the world.