Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture by Kaplan E. Ann

Author:Kaplan, E. Ann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-22767-0
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

“Joy”: taken from a mother–infant interaction study, this image shows the baby’s ecstatic response to its mother’s presence. Images from Young’s video (easily identified) mimic this look but we were refused permission to reprint them.

“Loss”: taken from the same study, this image shows the baby expressing loss and mxiety at its mother’s absence. Images from the Young video show a forlorn longing close to this look, but again we were refused permission to reprint them here.

The stage shots focus heavily on Young’s interaction with his fans. In an early shot, repeated later on, Young receives flowers from a fan; rarely is there a shot of him on stage that does not include the fans’ arms in front or rear of the frame, or show them packed into the huge auditorium. He is tender and responsive to them, the image usually showing his back bending over the fans in a nurturing, loving fashion, leaning toward them and stretching out his hands. Occasionally we have close-ups of the fans’ faces, when we are able to see their rapt, adoring expression; their gaze is fixed unwaveringly on him and on his every movement and their arms reach out to touch him in response to his gesture. In one shot, Young literally runs across the wide stage and rolls down on the floor among the delirious, caressing fans.

These images seem to evoke being held in loving embrace, being nurtured and cared for, as the mother cares for her infant. The fans love Young and he in turn loves them, and the video shows ecstatic expressions on everyone’s part during their interaction. Meanwhile, the images intercut from the studio set focus more on loss and separation – on, that is, the mother’s absence. Here the often extreme close-ups of Young’s face show a forlorn, lost look such as the infant might have on discovering the mother’s departure. The contrast between fulfillment and loss is stressed by the cutting: for instance, after an exuberant image of Young rolling on the floor with the fans (no words on the track), we cut to an extreme close-up of Young’s forlorn face as, with eyes closed, he lip-synches the lines “Go on and go free/Baby you’re too close to see” into the microphone (waterylines in back of the image suggest tears). Another similar contrast takes place a little earlier in the video, where we go from an image of Young with his rapt fans, and another of him bending over the fans, to a shot of him in the studio set, caught behind the fishing net as he sings the lines “You take a piece of me with you.”

Later on, the exuberance of a simulated plenitude with his fans on stage is intercut in rapid succession with the net image (obviously signifying emotional entrapment). These net shots are usually taken from a high angle, suggesting the hero’s smallness and vulnerability, while the stage shots show him often in the foreground, looming large against the fans.

Towards the end of the

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