This excerpt is from an extended textual analysis of Bob Sinclar's 'Rock This Party': a video that captures a retrospective sensibility in pop music video concurrent to the proliferation of YouTube in the mid Noughties. The full article can be viewed on Plastic Letters and also on the Routlege Media website, where it was originally published in 2009.
"From a theoretical standpoint the popular music video has long been considered the ultimate example of the post-modern text. Music video is a depthless world in which musicians lip sync in simulated depictions of musical performance or act out the fragmented narrative elements eluded to in the lyrics. ‘Rock This Party’ reinforces this idea in the fluid representation of Beaudoin’s identity as he ‘becomes’ different stars at specific points in the music. For example, in the songs opening riff we see him playing air guitar in the guise of Kurt Cobain, and Angus Young from AC/DC.
As the beat shifts into a harder r+b style, he then transforms into Justin Timberlake before becoming Bob Marley as the record then takes on a more reggae/calypso feel. This pattern continues throughout the video whereby sonic conventions are indexed to very specific visual codes. In particular the guitar riff is accompanied by depictions of rock performers (Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Beatles, AC/DC), while the softer more melodic parts are juxtaposed invocations of more traditional r+b/disco performances (Michael Jackson, Saturday Night Fever etc).
It is interesting to note, however, that while actor David Bedouin is given license to transgress temporal and racial boundaries, there is no footage of him performing as female. This rejoinder to the dominant structure of the cultural hegemony is reinforced also by the choice of location: an affluent suburb of Montreal. And, indeed, part of the pleasure for the audience is lifestyle aspiration. This is connoted, for example, in the way that the camerawork lingers to focus on details of the house: its capacious garaging, ornate portico and imposing threshold. In this sense the celebration of the incidental material backdrop echoes the visual style of television drama: the largesse of shows like The O.C or Beverley Hills 90210.
Of course the subtle codes of avarice are routinely worked into the visual presentation of Hip-Hop and R+B: the celebration of materialism or ‘bling’ that accompanies videos for artists like Jay Z and 50 Cent. And indeed an element in the construction of ‘Rock This Party’ is of course the rap by Dollarman and Big Ali. However, the significance of the ‘Rock This Party’ lies beyond the representation of sex, race and social class and is in the representation of pop music video history itself. To understand this, however, it is perhaps necessary to understand a little more about the broader contours of popular music video.
While some music videos affect a genuine representation of musical performance, this veneer of authenticity conceals the constructed and artificial nature of the representation. Musicianship is often central to this: the presence of guitar, bass and drums serving as motifs for a recordings musical providence. Videos in the rock idiom are particularly prone to rehearse hackneyed depictions: mean and moody men who wield guitars like weapons and lead singers who prostrate themselves heroically against the challenge of getting to the end of the first chorus.
The charm of ‘Rock This Party’, however, is it that it does none of this. Working within the dance genre the promo the track is not pre-occupied with fabricating the circumstances of the records production: if it was then the video would focus on the studio exploits of the French DJ and not the fantatastical suburban world of 15 year old David Beaudoin. That is not to say, however, that videos for dance records do not have clichés of their own: the scantily clad, blonde babe is as much a feature of promos for artists like Eric Pridz and Uniting Nations as it is Aerosmith or Guns ‘n’ Roses.
However, with records composed entirely of samples there is less pre-occupation with the signification of musical authenticity. For example, videos for early house music records by artists like S-Express and Black Box tended to favour more abstract depictions of club culture in keeping with social activities associated with the music: choreographed dance routines and bright lighting. ‘Rock This Party’, however, is groundbreaking because it dares to take the genre out of this ghetto.
In one sense this reflects the notion that Bob Sinclar is very much a ‘second-generation’ pioneer of electronic dance music: his place at the top table is secure alongside other producer-DJ acts like Fat Boy Slim, Moby or Chemical Brothers. However, it is also a product of sample based dance music’s place in pop music history. Twenty years on from the digital revolution of the Eighties, the history of popular music that Sinclar recuperates is very much its own; ‘Rock This Party’ is of course based heavily on C+C Music Factories ‘Gonna Make You Sweat’ (1990), a record itself constructed entirely from samples. The old adage that ‘pop will eat itself' is no longer true: it already has. And this sentiment is explored in Thiabut’s audaciously parodic video clip."
Dr Stephen Hill
Read the whole article
Comments