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Unruly Media. YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema . By Carol Vernallis . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2013. 354 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-976699-4
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This is not just a book on music video, but rather on the recent changes in audiovisual aesthetics and its relation to music. This is the way Carol Vernallis approaches the new audiovisual phenomena that emerged in the digital age, a set of 'unruly media' that dissolved the barriers of genre definitions and gave rise to a complex panorama of interrelated texts that arose from the new practices of 'prosumers' on the internet and from a new audiovisual aesthetic.
This book is divided in three main parts that aim to give a wide overview of the processes that are taking place nowadays; each part is dedicated to a different audiovisual medium (i.e. new digital cinema, YouTube and music video), but all three are closely connected.
Vernallis begins by reflecting on the progressive convergence of audiovisual media and technology since the early years of the 21st century, and by highlighting the relevance of 1980s' music video in this process as 'the laboratory' (p. 5) for the current audiovisual aesthetics, as most contemporary filmmakers used to watch and direct music videos at that time. Moreover, the profile of contemporary directors is much more heterogeneous nowadays, and they usually work across movies, music videos and advertisements, contributing to the interaction of audiovisual genres. She argues, as demonstrated in her previous book (Experiencing Music Video, 2004), that music video is a 'musical genre' (p. 36), and so music is playing a key role in the...