What You See is What You Get
The post-postmodern approach to the visual representation of sound in
Michel Gondry‘s The Hardest Button to Button
1. Introduction
In this essay, I want to analyze the music video for the White
Stripes song "The Hardest Button to Button" directed by Michel Gondry
and examine how sound is represented visually in this piece. This essay is
essentially the written form of my presentation held on the 3rd of June 2014 in
the context of the seminar "Sum Fistsful of Music: Videos You Gotta
Analyze Before the Term Ends" conducted by Prof. Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath at
the Goethe University in Frankfurt.
After comparing
three different sources of inspiration with their interpretation in the video,
I will try to summarize Gondry‘s perspective by analyzing the
adaptions constituted by him. Considering the music video as a whole, I will
then interpret it as a metaphor for recording sound and explain how this theory
ties in with my interpretations of the individual shots, mentioned earlier.
Finally, I will try to put The Hardest Button to Button in
context and determine, if it can be considered postmodern, and identify it as a
piece transcending this movement, which could be considered post-postmodern.
Concluding this Essay, I will summarize the analysis of the video and
incorporate my own opinion.
2. Visual Sound in The Hardest Button to Button
Gondry incorporates different traditions of transcribing sound into
visual information throughout the video. Technical strategies, representations
in art, as well as musical theory are keys terms for understanding the
different sources of inspiration mirrored in The
Hardest Button to Button.
The first strategy of visualizing sound I would like to
elaborate on, is one that mimics the style of the representation of sound in
the technical field. Here, frequencies or other variables like volume are
indicated by graphs, or simplified forms thereof. Depending on the data
displayed, full columns depict high volume or frequencies, while empty columns
constitute low volume or frequencies. This visualization functions as a sliding
scale and allows to track information in relation to time passed, as the columns
move in a steady rhythm, translating the
data by lighting up for its viewer at random. Gondry here draws inspiration
from the simpler type of representation, often found on boomboxes in the
eighties and nineties, as opposed to the more complicated frequency spectrums
more common in a professional context. The band members, Meg and Jack White,
move back and forth, toward and away from
the camera to the beat of the music, imitating the columns of a stereo. In a
sense, the representation has come full circle. The band creates the music,
which is represented by the columns on the playback device, which is mirrored
by the band in the video. By having the band mirror the columns of a stereo,
Gondry challenges the relationship of original and representation, and raises
the question which occurrence is cause and which symptom.
The second form of visualization appearing in the video I
want to discuss, is the expression of music through art. While there are many
ways of interpreting sound as visual
art, I want to focus on dance. Exhibiting similar properties as the music
video, namely the aspect of movement, choreographed dance may be one of the
oldest forms of transcribing sound into picture, often by accompanying one with
the other. Busby Berkeley, a choreographer active in the Hollywood of the
thirties, prevails as a genius of the trade and shall serve as an example of my
point. Berkeley managed to conduct dancers in ways that made them not only
accompany music, but provide visual content by creating hypnotic symmetrical
shapes and movements. In these choreographies, the
dancers‘ bodies
are detached from their usual meaning and put into a completely different
context, acting as identical beads in a human kaleidoscope. Gondry adapts this
principle and breathes life into inanimate objects by making them dance.
Instead of objectifying human bodies and demoting them into things, he elevates
Meg White‘s
drum kits to dancers, placing them in a choreography similar to Berkeley‘s.
Where Berkeley uses the fluid movement of bodies to express sound, Gondry
utilizes things, adapting this form of expression to a capitalist consumerist
environment.
The third area of inspiration reflected in the music
video is musical notation. Borrowing from tablature notation, Gondry
transcribes this visual representation into a literal one. Where tablature
notation marks a sound of a specific part of the drum kit with a symbol on a
grid, The Hardest Button to Button features
the actual drum heard playing in a representational pattern. Deconstructing "the drums"
as a musical instrument, single components of the drum kit here function as a
visual for the sound they make when they make it, as opposed to being part of a
larger construct with the ability of creating a sound. Again, passive is
realized as active in this music video and the origin of sound and
representation are challenged. Tablature notation usually functions as an
instruction manual to be followed. The drum kit in The Hardest Button to
Button, however, does not seem to be supposed to serve as a notation, but
rather as pictorial apparition of a noise. If the tablature imitates the drums
and the drums in the video imitate the tablature, they ultimately serve as a
representation of themselves, their single components functioning as symbols
for their sound.
Furthermore, it could be argued that The
Hardest Button to Button serves as a metaphor for the
recording of sound. In the video, the musical instruments appear one by one in
a line, while the musicians move forward with each appearing instrument. In
this example, there are many drum sets visible, whereas there is only a single
Meg White. Once they have appeared, the drum kits stay fixed in their spot,
only White is allowed to move. Similar to how when recording music, the cause of the sound, the artist, is ephemeral and must move on with the
passing time, it is the sounds captured, conserved on a record that are
timeless and can be replayed on demand. The way that instrument and artist are
portrayed in The Hardest Button to Button therefore suggests that the
music video is a visual for the recorded title of the album, as opposed to the
song as an unbound concept. By reducing the White Stripes to symbols expressing
the sound of their recording, Gondry blurs the line between subject and object,
forcing the viewer to wonder who is imitating what.
At first glance, it
seems to be the artist who is moving freely, rendering the instrument a passive
entity which appears at his will. In an interview, Gondry reveals the technicalities
of filming the video. Naturally the drum sets were not emerging out of thin air
according to Meg White‘s will, but rather White following
the previously set up instruments. Without this background information, the
music video can be seen from two perspectives. Either the viewer believes it is
the musician who makes the instruments appear, of the other way around.
Considering the process of creating the visual effect for the video however,
seems to allows only one interpretation. Again, Gondry has the musicians follow
the apparition of their music and allows passive objects to gain agency,
thereby challenging the audience to question cause and effect.
Clearly,
representation is a major topic of this video, but can this piece be considered
postmodern? Simulation, the postmodern term for representation as it were, is
described by Jean Baudrillard as substitution of
signs of the real, for the real (Baudrillard 11). According to this, The
Hardest Button to Button features several instances of simulations of
simulations. The White Stripes are representing the columns of a frequency
spectrum, which itself is a representation of sound, the dancing drum kits are
representations of dancing women, who in turn are representing the music they
are dancing to, the tablature notations, which is a representation of noise,
are represented by the actual drum that would make that noise and the entire
video seems to be a representation of the recording of the song, which itself
is a representation of the actual performance, which is a representation of the
song as an abstract concept. Additionally, the sheer mass of products appearing
in The Hardest Button to Button attest to a consumerist perspective.
However, while Gondry does discuss terms associated with the postmodern, his
work does not qualify as a classic piece of the movement. James MacDowell has
suggested that Gondry‘s
work is not to be classified as postmodern, but rather post-postmodern
(MacDowell 15). The quirky quality of the video, which manifests itself for
instance by the animate life of objects, points toward a less cynical take on
postmodernism (Mac Dowell 14), making it something beyond.
3. Conclusion
In my opinion, Gondry accomplishes two different things in The
Hardest Button to Button. Firstly, he combines different forms
of the visual representation of sound, utilizing diverse subjects and
transforms them into depictions that are of equal value to one another. Instead
of dancing lights on a boombox, the band members of the White Stripes are
dancing to and fro. In place of dancers who express music with their bodies, it
is dancing music instruments that charm the viewer‘s
eye. Dead place holders on a piece of paper turn into living symbols, appearing
as a live representations of the sound they make. Merging these different
influences, Gondry demonstrates that he values technology, art and musical
theory equally, eliminating a differentiation of high and low brow culture.
Secondly, Gondry transforms the different depictions of
noise into versions that include his perspective, making them a post-postmodern
take on the visual representation of music. Throughout the video, Gondry
challenges the viewers concept of reality and representation, cause and
symptom, original and imitation. In The Hardest
Button to Button each of these conceptual dualities is
purposefully portrayed as affecting each other in a dialogue. Breaking with the
perception of these terms as dualisms, Gondry enables his audience to perceive
them as fluid concepts. Furthermore, there are many instances of inanimate
objects gaining an active role, and humans functioning as simulations which
occur in the video. This phenomenon can be linked to Gondry‘s
affinity for handmade filmmaking and stop-motion animation. However, just as
his playful notion of simulation mentioned above, this quirky perspective on
consumerism is also evidence for a post-postmodern attitude.
I personally feel that not only is The
Hardest Button to Button an exemplary piece of Gondry‘s
work, but a paradigm of post-postmodern thinking. Pieces like this video
institute a discussion often thought as concluded. Simultaneously representing
music visually in an esthetic manner and integrating coherent messages to be
interpreted, this piece successfully operates as music video and cultural
theory. In The Hardest Button to Button Gondry has transcended the
cynical approach to postmodernism and proven that a music video can work as
both entertainment and art.
4. Works cited
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and
Simulation. Michigan: University of Michigan
Press, 1994. Print.
Busby Berkeley - Dance Until The Dawn.
Youtube.
AnnaMayWongSociety, 15 June 2008. Web.
22 Aug. 2014.
Digital image. May Studio Music Lessons.
Lynne May, 17 May 2008. Web. 22 Aug. 2014.
MacDowell, James. "Wes Anderson, Tone and the Quirky
Sensibility." New Review of
Film and Television Studies 10.1 (2012): 6-27. Print.
The Hardest Button to Button. Dir. Michel Gondry. Perf. The White Stripes. 2003. Musicvideo.
The White Stripes. "The Hardest Button
to Button." Elephant. XL, 2003. CD.
White Stripes - Hardest Button to Button (making).
Youtube. Egyptiansushi, 12 Nov.
2006. Web. 23 Aug. 2014
Woodchipper
Massacre (1988). Digital image. Tumbler.com. Gifsploitation, Jan. 2014. Web. 22 Aug. 2014.