Is it more than rock and roll?: considering music video as argument.

• Author: Walker, Gregg B.
• Position: Special Issue: Condensed Mediated Argument

INTRODUCTION

At 12:01 A.M. on August 1, 1981, in the Loft restaurant of Fort Lee, New Jersey, popular culture history was made. With the words, "Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n roll," the Music Television cable network (MTV) began broadcasting nationwide, 24 hours a day. Now, more than a decade later, "MTV" seems synonymous with popular youth culture, with an estimated audience of 210 million in 78 countries (Wells, 1992, p. A8). MTV has estimated that, in any given week, 28 million viewers tune in to music television in the United States; 39 million in Europe. Further, record companies spend over 50 million dollars annually to make music videos (Ross, 1990; Wells, 1992).

Music video, no longer an ephemeral fad, has become an enduring feature of popular culture; a feature of potentially influential social expression. "Music videos," Pat Aufterheide writes, "are pioneers in video expression, and the results of their reshaping the form extend far beyond the television set" (1986, p. 57). ABC television's Judd Rose, reporting on MTV in a Prime Time Live piece, suggests that "MTV's style, frenetic, nonverbal, and dazzlingly visual, has influenced everything from movies, to TV dramas, to commercials, even campaign ads." Further, Rose asserts, "MTV [and music video] speaks a language everyone understands, a language of images. Of course, what those images say is another matter" (Ross, 1990; see also Denisoff, 1989). Aufterheide surmises that "one of music video's distinctive features as a social expression is its open-ended quality, aiming to engulf the viewer in its communication with itself, its fashioning of an alternative world where image is reality" (1986).

Music video involves the audience. "Part of music video's commercial success," Lisa St. Clair Harvey points out, "is attributed to the form's exceptional malleability; few other genres are as open to audience interpretation as are experiential, highly impressionistic music videos" (1990, p. 40). Citing the work of Muriel Cantor (1987), St. Clair Harvey asserts that music video audiences may desire to decode meanings in the television text. Music video appears potentially fertile with meaning. Stuart Hall comments that

MTV is quite extraordinary. It takes fragmentation, the plurality of signification, to new heights. But I certainly couldn't say that it is unintelligible. Each so-called meaningless fragment seems to me rich with connotations. It seems perfectly clear where MTV comes from; indeed, it is almost too predictable in its 'unpredictability.' 'Unpredictability' is its meta-message. We know enough about the tendencies of mass culture for the last hundred years to recognize that MTV does not come from outer space. (Grossberg, 1986, p. 61)

In sum, music video exists as a form of social expression in which audiences participate actively to interpret meaning. This suggests the potential for considering music video as persuasive argument; messages that advance claims in order to gain the adherence of viewers.

This essay addresses music video as argument. It does so by reporting on one study that comprises part of a research project on music video and social influence. The study, involving almost two hundred student viewers, examines the extent to which people identify in music videos dominant claims that seek viewer adherence. As its grounding, this article presents a theoretical orientation and a review of relevant music video empirical research.

Mediated Communication as Social Action

This study of viewers' judgments about music video as argument reflects a perspective of communication as social action, as presented in the work of Anderson and Meyer (1988). These scholars note that "for most of the history of research in mass communication, content has been seen as a silver bullet shot from a media gun to penetrate a hapless audience". Audiences are not hapless nor passive. Media audiences participate actively in mediated communication; they construct meanings from the content they perceive. Communication, Anderson and Meyer explain, "is an interactive process in which communicants, content, and scene are all referenced and must be accounted for in some sense-making performances." Meanings emerge from sense making, an "improvisational performance of interpretation". Anderson and Meyer further clarify that

Meaning is not delivered in the communication process, rather it is constructed within it . . . each communication act generates at least three separate and potentially different sites of this construction. Meanings arise in the intentions of the producer, in the conventions of the content, and in the interpretations of the receiver. (1988, p. 48)

This research is interested in the interpretations of the receiver, that is, the music video viewer. It does not strive to locate the intentions of the architects of particular music videos (the producers, the directors, the artists, the actors) nor does it scrutinize video technique. While these features of communication as social action may warrant consideration, this study regards viewer perceptions as a productive starting point for examining music video as argument.

Music Video and a Social Action View of Argument

Social action theory is concerned with communication interaction in terms of actors' intent, receivers' interpretations, and message content. These concerns are consistent with features of an audience-centered view of argument. An audience-centered approach to argument features arguments as something actors create, arguments as something receivers perceive and judge, and arguments as something that occurs as part of a process of communication interaction.

This research considers argumentation as "process of advancing, supporting, modifying, and criticizing claims so that appropriate decision makers may grant or deny adherence" (Rieke & Sillars, 1984, p. 5). The "something" of arguments actors make or advance involves the communication of both identifiable claims and overtly expressed reasons (O'Keefe, 1982). The "reasons" or "support" for an argument claim may include non-discursive elements (Walker, 1985). These elements, such as the visual component of a message, may prove as influential as the discursive content, depending on receivers' interpretations. The "something" of arguments that receivers perceive is constructed by the receivers themselves as they actively encounter discourse. Ultimately, audiences as decision-makers will determine the viability of any persuasive argument. As Robert Trapp has noted, argument is "an inherently human activity" that "exists in the everyday lives of ordinary people" (1987, p. 185). Even though actors design discourse as argument, "ordinary people . . . are in the best position to decide when an event is to be interpreted as an argument" (Trapp, 1987, p. 186). Both actors and receivers participate in the "something" of argument interaction - what arguments are and what arguments mean. They construct and negotiate meanings, and in doing so, receivers decide the extent to which they agree with an argument as they comprehend it. This perspective of argument reflects Simon's view of argument and persuasion as co-active: "receiver-oriented rather than source-oriented;" adhering to the maxim that persuasive argument occurs on the message recipient's terms (1986).

Audience-centered argumentation, when placed within the broader social action theory of mediated communication, considers a message's purpose (as perceived by receivers), discursive and non-discursive content, and audience response. It locates judgment in the "ordinary person," or in the case of music video, the viewer. As social action, music video may possess the potential to influence viewers as argument discourse. Viewers can determine what a music video means and in so doing may be influenced by it. Their viewing experience is active within the context of their life experience; viewers' attendance to and "interpretation of mediated communication is essentially a social process - a social process that arises within the context of meaning production" (Anderson & Meyer, 1988, p. 116). As they encounter media - including music video - viewers encounter possible argumentative messages.

This study asks subjects - "ordinary people" - to decide if music videos contain elements of arguments, and as such, can exist as arguments. The research is grounded in a social action/audience-centered view of argument. Its anchors are the concrete elements of this perspective. Specifically, the research presents videos to viewers - music video interpreters and decision makers - and questions them about claims, adherence, and reasons. The study learns from prior music video research, but considers an area - social influence - and asks questions not posed in previous music video investigations.

Music Video Research

Even twelve years ago "music video" as a phenomenon did not exist. As music video has aged, scholarship on it has emerged. Some work is principally descriptive, offering historical accounts of MTV and the music video industry (e.g., Doherty, 1987; Denisoff & Romanowski, 1990). A number of writers have recently published analytical critiques of music videos, its industry, or MTV (e.g., Kinder, 1984; Aufderheide, 1986; Fiske, 1986; Kaplan, 1987; Acland, 1989; Burns, 1989; Rabonowitz, 1989; L. Lewis, 1987, 1990). This research area includes some rhetorical studies of music video (e.g., Rybacki & Rybacki, 1991). Critical work, though, does not feature audience - reviewers and the messages, content, and meaning they perceive and construct (J. Lewis, 1991). Andrew Goodwin, in his critique of Ann Kaplan's Rock Around the Clock, contends that "if we are concerned with the meaning of popular culture in contemporary society . . . we need to understand cultural products (or [music video] "texts") as they are understood by audiences" (1987, cited in J. Lewis, 1991, p. 47).

A third body of music video...