Abstract

This thesis provides an analysis of music videos and music television in an effort to elucidate one way that ideological (in this case, Western capitalism) values and ideas are replicated through the media. To accomplish this, I examine the way in which contentious music videos are treated by music and television broadcast institutions in order to maintain control of audience expectations. Control over audience expectations creates a stable marketplace as well as a sales channel to market not only music, but also a plethora of related merchandise within ancillary industries. Contentious music videos disrupt this stable marketplace by defying or changing audience expectations, and thereby creating instability in the form of controversy, defiance of community standards, or challenging proven and profitable formats used by broadcasters to integrate music videos into a corporate product line. I argue that contentious videos are subject to control mechanisms in the form of content editing or the cultivation a preexisting set of values that often defines what can be broadcast. In cases where a contentious video proves profitable, it is then integrated into the broadcast system that absorbs the controversy, using it to change the boundaries of contentiousness and regain a control over a stable market. This represents the maintenance of hegemonic power through the media, or--to put it another way--the control of meaning in the service of power