http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srgi2DkDbPU
This video is a black and white minimalist piece without any editing whatsoever. Dylan holds up placards containing words and phrases from "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and discards them as the song progresses. Throughout the piece, many of the placards are deliberately spelt wrongly and phrases and words appear on the placards that aren't even in the lyrics (maybe to create comedy or puzzlement for the audience). The end of the video is particularly entertaining. Dylans final card simply reads "WHAT??" possibly to show that the presentation may have even left himself confused.
Wednesday 17 October 2007
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6 comments:
This video is very simple in terms of technique, and the only character is non-matrix, in that he completes a task of holding placards and nothing more. However, such a simple method, instead of being visually dull, is very interesting due to its simplicity. It is amusing that the only real narrative element gained from the video is that some of the key words and phrases of the song are displayed for the viewer. That some of these words are spelt wrong however as Dean notes, seems to subvert the function of the placard, which ordinarily works to reinforce important ideas. This video seems very truthful; it is literally a video to accompany music, and thus the emphasis remains very much on the music, rather than the video.
Yeah, what Claire said! The only distraction for me from the music was sometimes the ways in which some lyrics had been drawn, or the additional/mis-spelt lyrics that made me think about the D.I.Y nature of the video and that, therefore, upped the sincerity of the artist in my view.
Out of all the videos posted (as great as they all are), this one is undoubtedly my favourite. I'm not really a fan of Bob Dylan but I feel that the song and the video complement each other really well.
I'm sure you're all (at least partially) aware of the films of Andy Warhol. They tend to be simple in nature, with a narrow focus on something very specific. Criticism of his films is usually aimed at their length ('Empire,' Warhol's unchanging focus on the Empire State Building clocks in at over 5 hours). Why is this relevant? Because Dylan himself was a regular at Warhol's 'Factory' Studio in New York.
One is able to draw obvious comparisons between Warhol's films and this video (for a start, it appears to be filmed with a similar camera to the model Worhol preferred). The focus is on Bob Dylan, and his discarding of the placards that guide (and indeed mis-guide) the viewer through the lyrical framework of the song.
Whilst Dylan discards these placards in a pre-destined order, the performance is so simple that I would personally regard it as being almost entirely 'non-matrixed.'
Note his reactions to wrongly-spelled placards. Although he clearly acknowledges their inconsistency, he invests no emotion in this recognition. Rather than widening his eyes and dropping his jaw, he rather passively continues his performance.
It was mentioned in the seminar that this video really aligns Dylan with the beatnik movement. It's interesting that such a laid back, seemingly spontaneous video can be as successful in establishing the persona of an artist as the more contructed, artificed videos, such as Bjorks.
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