US VH-1. (2000, April). Top ten Music videos of the 90s.

OVERVIEW

This is actually a review of a recent program on the VH-1 music video channel. The following videos were selected as the best videos of the previous decade:

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. How many of the videos above do you remember or know? If you’ve never seen these videos, how could you get a look at them?
2. What’s missing here in your opinion? How would you change or re-rank this list?
3. How might these videos be used in class or a youth group? What discussion of them (and other videos) would you like to see?
4. How are these videos examples of postmodern art? How are they important signs of the times?
5. Do these videos tell stories? How are setting, characters, and plot arranged?
6. Quite a bit has been written and said about religious and spiritual icons in music videos. What icons or images do you see here?
7. How are images used to convey messages? What are the messages in these videos?

IMPLICATIONS

• If television is a part of postmodernity, music videos are quintessential postmodernism.
• Notice the use of special effects.
• Notice the use of irony and parody, pastiche, and collage in these videos.
• Notice the religious icons and search for spiritual meaning in these videos.
• Those who tell the stories control a culture. Notice the power and messages of these stories.

Dean Borgman cCYS