Much of the research on music video makes only fleeting references (if any) to the music, causing one to question the value of sound in music video. Kaplan especially, applies extensive Hollywood film theory to music videos in whole chapters of her book which are dedicated to the avant-garde, to the central image and iconography of video clips and to comparisons - of Marilyn Monroe's Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend and Madonna's Material Girl video from 1985, and of the extreme close-up of a human eye which appears in both Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Eurythmics' Sexcrime (1984). Even her definitions of the five types of video seen on MTV are based on categorizations of film, e.g. Romantic, Classic, Nihilistic etc.

There are obvious links between music videos and films, especially considering that many current chart hits are used to promote a movie rather than the artist's own album. Recent examples are Guns'n'Roses' You Could Be Mine (from Terminator 2, 1992), UB4O's (I Can't Help) Falling In Love With You (from Sliver, 1993) and Bjork and David Arnold's Play Dead (from The Young Americans , 1993) — all of which feature extensive film footage in their accompanying promo clips, U340's clip having been filmed in a style relevant to the themes of voyeurism and hidden cameras that dominate the movie it is taken from.

Serious attempts have been made to emulate the films; Madonna employed both a movie director and actor Christopher Walken for the clip for Bad Girl (1992), while David Lynch was employed to direct Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy in 1990. The trouble is, as is the case with the clips taken from movies, is that the music has very to do with the images presented.

There seems to be more sense in the words of Andrew Goodwin, who states that "songs are not the movies" (p.74) and uses film theory to illustrate the point. He argues that by incorporating lip-synchronization into the video, the performer is addressing the viewer directly, as opposed to the distance between actor and audience in a movie, brought about by ignoring the camera in an attempt to act "more natural".

This brings a voyeuristic quality to watching movies that doesn"t manifest itself in music video, where lip-syncing sees to embrace the viewer, bringing him/her into the action. An example is Massive Attack's Protection (1995) set in an apartment block, into which we are looking from the outside. Any feeling of intrusion is calmed by the regular appearance of Tracey Thorn who seems to sing directly to us. Singers mope so than other acts are likely to address the camera directly - a practice that is no doubt meant to underscore the supposedly more intimate nature of songs (Goodwin, p.78).

Other writers seem to share Kaplan's dismissal of music as a primary factor of music video, and partly to blame for this attitude is the advertising industry and promotion techniques. Albums, singles and tours are advertised in magazines, on billboards, on buses etc. while pop musicians advertise soft drinks and trainers, and even if no music is used to accompany the TV ads - the image of musical presence is split from the musical sound, and makes itself more powerful than the sound" (Berland, from Sound and Vision" p.37). This suggests that image is more important than sound.

Image is an important point of discussion in music video, and various writers make reference to it, its result being problematic. Philip Tagg (1983) suggests that listeners of pop music already "visualise" the music they near using a series of semantic connections they hear created by the text. A mini-movie therefore appears in the listener's mind, and each version is different, since people react to music differently. Will Straw sees the promo clip as a threat to the listener's individuality, and seems to take away the responsibility of visualising the music, "diminishing the interpretive liberty of the individual music listener who, when presented with a promo clip, sees to have visual or narrative interpretations of song lyrics imposed on him or her" (Sound and Vision p.3). The lyrics of Depeche Mode's Walking in my Shoes suggest certain images –

You'll stumble in my footsteps
Keep the same appointments I kept
If you try walking in my shoes.

yet the visuals of the promo clip are abstract and surreal, perhaps being the most extreme example of the promo clip as art for art's sake". It may also be what Goodwin calls a total emancipation of sound and vision.

In Your Room (again by Depeche Mode and again directed by Anton Corbijn) on the other hand, while containing references to past Depeche Mode clips, makes reference to images of a lightbulb that flickers on and off, and a chair in which the members of the band are seen strapped into at various points during the clip. These images seem to reinforce the lyric

Will I always be here?

and suggest imprisonment or confinement without having to literally translate the text of the song. Goodwin calls this "disjuncture" of sound and vision (p.88) and is one form of struggle between image and song. According to Goodwin "the debate about whether or not the video image triumphs over the song itself needs to take account of where the emphasis lies in the visualisation, and...whether or not it illustrates, amplifies or contradicts the meanlng of the song (p.86).

Amplification "introduces new meanings that do not conflict with the lyrics but that add layers of meaning (as with Depeche Mode's In Your Room), while in illustration, "visual narrative tells the story of the song lyric" and contradiction obviously has the visuals contradicting the narrative of the song - as in Massive Attack's Be Thankful For What You"ve Got (1992), a clip that was banned by both network and Music Television for its depiction of a transexual performing a striptease. The trouble with many of these theories is that they discuss links between visual representation and song, where "song" means "lyric", and very little is said about the music itself.

Next: Goodwin, sound and image