Theorist Sven Carlson

2. Sven Carlson - Theorist
Sven Carlsson believed that music videos in general fall into
two groups:
• Performance Clips: Where the video mostly shows an
artist (or artists) singing and/or dancing.
• Conceptual clips: where the video shows something else
during it duration often for an artistic effect.
• Music videos are there to communicate the messages of
the song through visual stimuli. This is debatable whether
this actually happens.

3. Sven E Carlsson
He also said that ‘One of the most common methods of
analysis is to break up the music video into black and
white boxes. Almost everything is then perceived as
opposites – trash or art, commerce or creativity, male or
female naturalism or antirealism, etc.’
This means that what is being said is the common
approach to music videos in the sense that binary
opposites drive the narration of the video forward.

4. Performance
Carlsson created the theory that most performance videos
makes the performer not the main protagonist anymore.
This is means that performers are restricted in the way that they
can perform as they are being used to sell their voice, face,
lifestyle etc. Carlsson says that this is down to the artist being a
seller of their body image.
Carlsson believes the performer is often made into
materialization ‘commercial exhibitionist’ and this is basically
where the performer is made almost into a selling item –
someone the fans aspire to be.