Video's Dead

1 September 2003


MTV VMA Show -- Digital's Killed the Video Star

Another MTV Video Music Awards show came and went last week at Radio City Music Hall in New York. There was THE KISS between Madonna and Britney Spears (not quite as interesting as the one between Don Corleone and his brother 'Fredo) and a few good performances by Mary J. Blige, Good Charlotte and Metallica. What summed the night up, though, was the presentation of Duran Duran's lifetime achievement award, during which the sound didn't work and Kelly Osbourne demanded that the crowd stand-up when they were confused about what was going on. The golden age of the video is long gone.

Duran Duran was one of the New Romantic groups that followed the punk explosion (Spandau Ballet, Visage, and Adam and the Ants were among the others). Fashionable rather than rebellious, clean rather than edgy, the New Romantics were ideal for the mini-movies that MTV played. The fact that the video was usually better than the song didn't much matter. Post-punk troubadour Billy Bragg once said, "They are the cavaliers, and we're the roundheads. Their clothes and haircuts are better than ours, but our music is better than theirs." And the record companies discovered that heavy video play on MTV would make a band. $250,000 for a video was considered cheap advertising.

Thanks to the sufferings of the record industry, and threat posed by the internet, $250,000 for a video is rare now. No longer does a group go to Sri Lanka to film an Indiana Jones sort of video like the Duranies did with "Hungry Like the Wolf." Now, it is more common to see a bunch of people partying in the background while the rapper, singer or group perform in the foreground. Videos are cheaper, less ambitious, and they look it.

There are still flashes of brilliance in video; Johnny Cash's remake of "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails remains one of the most disturbing and crushingly sad pieces of film this side of documentaries. Coldplay's "The Scientist" and A.F.I.'s "Girls Not Grey" still have that 1984 MTV feel. But Viacom, MTV's owner, has acknowledged the passing of the video's best years by its "Road Rules" marathons, "Jackass" and "Real World" programming. MTV2 still shows mostly videos, but not every cable and satellite system carries it. And Fuse, which may be the best of the lot, is seen by even fewer.

If there is hope for the video as an art form, though, it lies in the very thing that threatens it today -- digital technology. More can now be done in film -- as the Matrix, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings films have proved. Film is expensive, megapixels are not. Film editing is costly, editing software is not. As the cost of videos drop, they will become more plentiful -- and a few might even be good.

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