The visual album as a hybrid art-form

82 Pages·2014·1.74 MB·English

by  Cara Harrison

The visual album as a hybrid art-form:
A case study of traditional, personal, and allusive narratives
in Beyoncé

A Master’s Thesis for the Degree Master of Arts (Two Years) in Visual Culture

Cara Harrison

Division of Art History and Visual Studies
Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences
Lund University
KOVM12, Master Thesis, 15 credits
Supervisor: Max Liljefors
Spring semester 2014
Cara Harrison

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Cara Harrison
The visual album as a hybrid art-form: A case study of traditional,
personal, and allusive narratives in Beyoncé

The combination of visual art and music has resulted in many innovative audio-visual
phenomena and provides an on-going exciting avenue of artistic production. This thesis explores
one such phenomenon, the visual album. The visual album is a hybrid medium between music
video and film; like music video, it promotes an audio album, and like film, it is conceived as a
whole work of art. The visual album borrows formats, techniques and theories from genres, such
as direct address and the voyeuristic gaze, and uses them in a hybrid manner. I here define the visual
album in terms of formal characteristics and its presentation of visual content, delimit it against
other media and place it in a wider visual and music-cultural context. Through a case study of
Beyoncé (2013), I then investigate the visual album’s narrative content. Inspired by the contestation
of music video’s capacity for narrative, I show that the visual album can contain both classic
Hollywood cause-and-effect narrative and personal narrative within individual tracks. These
narratives are implemented through the development of characters and their interaction with the
artist’s star persona. In the absence of a strong overarching narrative, the visual album creates
continuity through the use of visual leitmotifs, which allude to earlier fictional and personal
narratives, to the language of narrative, and to narratives outside the visual album. I conclude that
the visual album is a new audio-visual genre separate from film and music video, and expresses
several different types of narratives. As the first detailed investigation of the visual album, the
results of this thesis provide insights to the fields of musicology and visual culture, and enable a
deeper understanding of audio-visual phenomena within society’s popular culture.

Keywords: Visual album, narrative, Beyoncé, character development, visual leitmotif.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to my Dad for inspiring me,
To my Mum for her encouragement and sage advice,
To Jochen for all his love, friendship and indefatigable, logical mind,
To my family and friends for all your support and laughter,
And finally, to Max, Lila, and the Blue Team for asking the tough questions when they needed to
be asked!

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Table of Contents

Abstract .......................................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................................... iv
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................ viii
Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 2: What is a visual album? ............................................................................................................ 8
2:1 The origin of the term Visual Album ............................................................................................... 8
2:2 Identifying formal qualities in the visual album .......................................................................... 10
2:3 Exploring the visual album’s hybridity: the influence of film and music video in visual
album content ......................................................................................................................................... 17
2:4 The visual album in relation to a changing music culture .......................................................... 23
Chapter 3: Narrative and character development in the case study Beyoncé ....................................... 28
3:1 Classic Hollywood narrative: cause-and-effect, and music video narrative: personal
narrative ................................................................................................................................................... 30
3:2 Developing characters in traditional and personal narratives ................................................... 32
3:3 The transparency of the fictional character Yoncé ..................................................................... 35
Chapter 4: Visual Leitmotifs in the case study Beyoncé .......................................................................... 42
4:1 Allusions to personal and fictional narratives within in Beyoncé ................................................ 43
4:2 Allusions to the language of narrative .......................................................................................... 44
4:3 Allusions to narratives outside of the visual album .................................................................... 50
Chapter 5: Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 55
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 59
Appendix ..................................................................................................................................................... 64

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Still images from Pretty Hurts demonstrating the different facets of the Miss Third Ward
character played by Beyoncé.
Figure 2. Still images from Partition and No Angel showing both the Yoncé character and the
indications of location.
Figure 3. Still images from Haunted show the appearance of Beyoncé in different filmic spaces
creating the possibility of different voyeuristic exchanges.
Figure 4. Still image from Mine showing Beyoncé imitating the Michelangelo sculpture of La
Pietà.
Figure 5: Still image from Rocket demonstrating the similarity to Helmut Newton’s city scape and
nude photographs.

All images are from the visual album Beyoncé (2013), Copyright © Columbia Records

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