Goodwin's Theory

Professor Andrew Goodwin, a graduate from the University of Birmingham with a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, is an author best known for his publications on music television and cultural theory. In his 1992 book, Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture, published by Routledge/University of Minnesota Press, Goodwin identifies specific elements of a music videos and notes how they must be featured within such a text. The aspects outlined within Goodwin's report supported him in theorising that music videos must contain or demonstrate the following:

• genre characteristics, such as stage performances for rock bands and dance routines for boy bands.
• a relationship between lyrics and visual, which is either amplifying, contradicting or illustrative.
• a relationship between music and visuals, which is again either amplifying, contradicting or illustrative.
• demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist, whom may also develop motifs which recur across their work as a visual style.
• frequent reference to the notion of looking, such as mirrors, screens within screens, telescopes, etc. and particular voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
• intertextual reference often to television programmes, films, other music videos, etc.

Analysis and examples of Goodwin's Theory in practice:

The Wombats are an English indie rock trio from Liverpool, whose fifth single released from their 2011 second studio album, Our Perfect Disease, provides elements that are synonymous of what is expected from a band of their genre in a music video.

From watching the music video with Goodwin's Theory in mind, the following points referenced within his text are able to be identified in the track's video:

• genre characteristics, such as stage performances for rock bands and dance routines for boy bands.
• a relationship between lyrics and visuals, which is either amplifying, contradicting or illustrative.
• a relationship between music and visuals, which is again either amplifying, contradicting or illustrative.

Throughout the duration of the music video, characteristics are displayed that are commonplace in such videos of that specific genre, which in this instance is a stage performance from a rock band, as outlined in the screenshots below:

This performance by the band can also be distinguished as a relationship between the visuals and both the lyrics and music, where the image of what we are viewing on-screen is amplified by the location of the staging in what seems to be an operating theatre, with the band members appearing fully-clothed in white alongside medical props, such as theatre lights and x-ray boards, shown below: