Christian Metz was a French film theorist who believed that genres go through a cycle of the following changes:
The Experimental:
This is when the codes and conventions are set.
The first Music video was filmed around 1925 and solely consists of a medium shot of a man singing on stage, holding a duck. This was the conventional way of performing during the earlier days of film, although the "singing duck" that accompanies Gus Visser in the video is rather unorthodox.
The Classic:
When the codes and conventions become iconic and idealised.
Well known classic music videos were created by artists such as Michael Jackson, Duran Duran and the Beatles. Most classic music videos originate from the early 1980s when MTV gained immense popularity.
The Parody:
When the codes and conventions are set and widely understood, they can then be mocked.
For example, the artist "Weird Al" Yankovic is well known for his popular parodies of classic and well known pop songs.
The Deconstruction:
This is when the boundaries of the genre are changed and experimented with and some codes and conventions are broken.
For example, Shania Twain took inspiration from Robert Palmer's video "Addicted to love", infamous for it's objectification of women, and changed the gender roles within her version, the video for "Man! I Feel Like a Woman".
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