In the past, especially w
ith regards to artists that were not linked to a contract, dance was used as an extra to promote an artist's music. Now, however, because of the availability of viewing videos on website such as "You Tube," the two come as a package deal, where dance not only promotes the music, but it enhances the sale of the record and has come to alter the way labels advertise their product. Interscope Records, for example, has "harnessed the biggest dance fad since the Macarena and put a teenager named Soulja Boy Tell'em in the running for a Grammy Award on Sunday." Soulja Boy originally publicized his work on a website by the name of "SoundClick,"a place where unsigned artists go to upload their songs. His song, however, was not discovered until the dance hit the web and exploded. Even icons such as MC Hammer, a popular artist in the 1990's has re-surfaced and become involved in the search for some new, "spotlight dance styles as they emerge," on the web.The incorporation of Web video in the music industry marked a shift in the emphasis from primarily auditory listening to a duel auditory and visual technology medium. While the dynamics within the industry have changed, the ease of accessibility of such website marked the ground-breaking communication channel that has created a new definition of argumentation in the field of dance. In airing dance moves over such a medium, people of all ages are allowed to make the argumentative claim that their moves are the "new," the most important, the hardest, and more innovative than their competition.
Unlike other visual mediums, film invites the audience to engage in the beats, by rewinding, fast forwarding, and studying the composition of the dance multiple times as proof of their claim to the fact that the dance produced was truly the best. As described by David Fleming in the Argumentation and Advocacy Journal, visuals are persuasive because they ha
ve an "inherent richness, concreteness, and ineffability." While Web videos may not be perfect from a production standpoint, the intensity of the message, especially in terms of break dancing definitely comes across loud and clear when heard by an audience.Web video is especially persuasive when it comes to proving specific points of persuasion that are embedded in a larger context. For example, clips within a movie or television episode that an individual needs to use to prove a point. The movie 8 mile, exhibits an intense freestyle rap contest in an underground garage. The back and forth upstaging battle between Eminem and his competitor represents an alternate form of argumentation in a creative and innovative sense and the clip can be successful in proving my claim.
In viewing the medium as a message of argumentation there are several key factors: the artists, the audience, the message, the context and whether or not the work is important enough to be preserved throughout time. There are also two main aspects to any argument, the claim and the evidence. The claim, with respect to dance videos on "You Tube," is that the dance produced is the "new," and that the artists moves are the strongest and most creative. However, the nature of the medium has changed the standards of evidence by giving new and different authority to website and technology as a source. Additionally, acting as an anti-hegemonic tool, it has given a voice to all different kinds of people including those that may have been otherwise silent. In terms of record label companies in search of dance routines, the new medium has introduced a new audition setting than what most artists have been used to, but it has given them a louder voice and a larger stadium with which to compete.
1 comment:
Great first post, chh. I think that your ideas regarding dance show some great insights into the changing world of the music industry. Musicians are becoming more than just artists – they are performers. This, to me, is more like the beginnings of the industry, when live performances were the dominant source of revenue for artists. The phenomenon of musicians selling more than just a song seems to look back to the time when the performance was worth more than the song itself.
I think that one of the most interesting points that you touched on in your post was the fact that break dancing is more of a competition than any of the previous dance fads. The Macarena, MC Hammer, even Michael Jackson had a dance that went along with many of his songs (Thriller, for example), but his dances were never about competition. They were merely an extra piece of the song. Soulja Boy’s Crank Dat or this new song Crank Dat Batman, on the other hand, are almost founded on a dance. The song is secondary; it is created to showcase the complexity and style of the performer’s moves.
In spite of this complexity, these new dance fads seem to be more prevalent than the older ones (Macarena, MC Hammer, etc). As you said in your post, this is likely due to the fact that individuals can look at the dance over and over again online before they do it themselves. They are able to teach themselves through sites like YouTube that did not exist when the older dance fads were started. But with all of these dances getting more and more complex, it will be interesting to see how far it can go. Eventually, artists will get to the point where the general public simply cannot keep up.
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