AKA Ping

Kenneth Anger passed away in May this year. The director is probably most well-known for the 1963 experimental short Scorpio Rising, a film about neo-Nazi bikers set entirely to a soundtrack of contemporary pop music. I discovered it in a film class over 50 years later, and I can tell you it’s still a hit among the film students of today.

Scorpio Rising can be seen as a predecessor to the modern concept of the music video. The songs are the focus of the soundtrack, uninterrupted by dialogue, and interact with the visuals to tell a more complex story than the audio or visuals could alone. A classmate of mine who took the same class that screened Scorpio Rising made an observation I found insightful: If we call Scorpio Rising both an experimental film and a proto-music video, that means music videos are in fact the current general-audience version of experimental film. Experimental film is more popular now than ever.

I think there’s been a clear elevation of music videos as an artform recently that speaks to that. I don’t recall seeing directors so prominently credited on music videos 15 years ago. The most recent winners of the Oscar for Best Directing were previously best known as music video directors, and while the music video to feature film career trajectory is nothing new, their work is definitely discussed differently than, say, David Fincher’s.

This year, I decided to put the theory into practice and dive deep into the world of music videos. My goal, in addition to discovering more music, was to explore the artform on its own terms. All the caveats I mentioned in my albums list last week apply. I am most likely an easily impressed neophyte, but I have to start somewhere.