It took place at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in NYC on SAT, July 28, 2007.  I’m simply cutting and pasting you tube clips onto this blog.

(PART 1) SAT, July 28, 2007.  ”Official History of Music Video” Presentation by CRITIC Armond White. 15th Annual Music Video show at 2007 SCANNERS Video Festival. Critic Armond White speaks on RuPaul “Back To My Roots” Music Video.

MANIFESTO Genre
Critic Armond White speaks on
RuPaul “Back To My Roots”
Director: Randy Barbato

Critic Armond White also wrote an article in The New York Press (where he works as a film critic) about his music video presentation at SCANNERS.

Here are a few Armond White quotes about this video when it initially came out:

“…The Back To My Roots video launches RuPaul’s full-length album Supermodel Of The World (Tommy Boy) in grand, hilarious, heartwarming style. As directed by Randy Barbato, it is one of the few pop videos to revel in Black physiognomy and the various notions of glamour that Black folks create—whether Afrocentric or Hollywood-derived, a drag queen like RuPaul has access to all of them. RuPaul sets the video in his mother Ernestine Charles’s beauty salon on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, as a personal and cultural homage—he goes to the source of personal reinvention, the actual factory of self-made Black men and women…”

“…Along with shout-outs to his homies (Miss Earlene, Burnetta, Little Baby Boy, Korneisha), RuPaul calls up various hairdos and Barbato throws hot colors, key lights, even a Nintendo grid, on each one: Corn Rows, Jheri-Curls, Afro Puffs, Hair Weave, Braids, Extensions, Asymmetrical Shrew. Every style is modeled by RuPaul, but in a blond wig and corresponding apparel – - a ploy that can only throw off cultural nationalists into a politically correct tizzy more confounding than the expected homophobic panic. For the chorus sequences, where dozens of Black folks show off different ‘dos in their own hair, to their own liking, RuPaul makes pluralism and unity seem fun – - but only after illustrating the Black cultural forms in which people take pluralism and unity for granted.”

“Going further than either Digable Planets’ “Nappy hair is life” statement or the Naughty By Nature video close-up of Treach doing his own braids (Everything’s Gonna Be Alright), Back To My Roots zeroes in on a Black universal: “Unh uh! I’m tender-headed!” That youth-and-ethnic-specific phrase deserves to be preserved in art (like the lice scene in The Long Day Closes and the hair-combing scene in The Color Purple). And in RuPaul’s art, it signifies the mental pains, the work of self-presentation and self-invention…”

The City Sun, June 30, 1992

Also in the book “THE RESISTANCE: Ten Years Of Pop Culture That Shook The World” By Armond White

(Part 2) SAT July 28, 2007. Critic ARMOND WHITE’s “Official History of Music Video: An Introspective” Presentation. 15th Annual Edition of the Show which is a part of the SCANNERS Video Festival at Lincoln Center. Here, Armond White speaks on Jill Jones video “Mia Bocca”

FANTASY Genre
Critic Armond White on
Jill Jones “Mia Boca”
Director: Jean-Baptiste Mondino

(Part 3) SAT July 28, 2007 — SCANNERS 2007 Video Festival at Lincoln Center in NYC. CRITIC Armond White’s “Official History of Music Video: An Introspective” Presentation. 15th Annual.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY Genre
Critic Armond White on
Bushwick Bill “Ever So Clear”
Director: P.S. O’ Neill

(Part 4) SAT, July 28, 2007 — SCANNERS 2007 Video Festival. Film Society of Lincoln Center. CRITIC Armond White’s “Official History of Music Video: An Introspective” Presentation. (15th Annual)

MEMOIR Genre
Critic Armond White on
Ice Cube “Dead Homiez”
Director: Eric Meza

Here are a few quotes by Armond White on the music video:

“…Boyz N The Hood may confirm Ice Cube’s star quality for the pop audience that pays no attention to rap, but Dead Homiez already proved his on-screen effectiveness – - the affable face and wide eyes that make him seem empathetic and concerned about Blacks’ oppression…”

“…The video’s style is hiphop elegy. The gang war violence that Boyz N The Hood sentimentalizes is given on intimate, too-late view that wasn’t apparent in the single alone. Cube lowers his temper to a cool sorrow and measures his rhythm so as to observe the death toll his other records (and malt liquor ads) encourage.”

“Dead Homiez would seem facetious and obscene if it weren’t so authentic about the styles of African American grieving. Set in a place Cube ordinarily would not be caught dead, it plays out various religious services as Cube surveys his reflection in a hearse window, the rotating funeral home announcements and the parade of suffering. The video’s entire procession is slo-mo; it makes every movement funereal – - walking, pall-bearing, hysterical crying, sermonizing and choir-singing…”

“…Cube detaches himself from the action by describing his presence (“I’m down in a suit and tie”) even though his absence is visible (he’s seen wearing a hooded jacket). The alienated rapper speaks for the dead: “So that’s why Ice Cube’s dressed up/Cuz the city is so damned messed up/And everyone’s so phony/Take a little time and think about your dead homiez.”

“There’s childishly confused anger (plus a sense of betrayal) in those lyrics. But the images fill in Cube’s cognitive lapses by bringing together the Black worlds of suits (church) and parkas (street) in the same shot. This makes vivid the gulf between generations and contrasting African American lifestyles. The slow-paced grieving harmonizes the superficial differences…”

“…(Director) Eric Meza’s most powerful images are in a montage of mourners: a close-up of a woman’s sweaty palm, creased with dark lines, waving in exhaustion and resignation. It’s matched by another waving hand that closes into a fist—not defiantly, but clenched in pain. That remarkable transition sums up contemporary Black progress.”

“…pioneering”

THE CITY SUN – July 17-23, 1991

(PART 5) SAT, July 28, 2007 – SCANNERS 2007 Video Festival. Film Society of Lincoln Center. CRITIC Armond White’s “Official History of Music Video: An Introspective” Music Video Presentation (15th Annual).

ELEGY Genre
CRITIC Armond White on
Erasure “Blue Savannah”
Director: Kevin Godley

Here are some Armond White quotes on this music video:

Erasure Transfigures Despair – The City Sun – Aug 7-13 1991

“Blue, a mood as well as a color, provides a rich, serene motif in Erasure’s video Blue Savannah. The song is one of the gentlest in Erasure’s catalog of mostly rollicking, up-tempo dance themes. This one has a luxuriant melody – - a peak of Vince Clarke’s keyboard work: full of so many arpeggios and crescendos, it achieves a genuine, if campy grandeur – - sort of as though when Liberace died, he sent pity and best wishes back down to earth.”

“…Instead of literalizing the lyrics, director Kevin Godley portrays the song’s mood. The setting is a garagelike sound stage first seen on the exterior, from above, as a blue hand (centered in the shot) slowly approaches the ground and moves forward, inward, as one long, smooth gesture—a reaching touch.”

“Godley’s zephyr-light hand and camera movements suggest Fate: Erasure is first encircled, then slowly painted blue. The color and the mood amplify each other in mythological tableaux (video age Maxfield Parrish with a nod to the body art in John Boorman’s Where The Heart Is).”

“The non-explicit subtext is, of course, mortality and AIDS. When the duo is fully tinted blue or their bodies dotted with tiny, gold amulets, flowers and cherubim, the ‘decoration’ looks like a psychedelic depiction of Karposi’s sarcoma lesions…”

(PART 6) SAT, July 28, 2007 — SCANNERS 2007 Video Festival. Film Society of Lincoln Center. CRITIC Armond White’s “Official History of Music Video: An Introspective” Music Video Presentation (15th Annual).

Peep the cameo by actor Chris Tucker.

(Part 6) ALLEGORY Genre
Critic Armond White on
MASE — “Feel So Good”
Director: Hype Williams

(PART 7) SAT, July 28, 2007 — SCANNERS 2007 Video Festival. Film Society of Lincoln Center. CRITIC Armond White’s “Official History of Music Video: An Introspective” Music Video Presentation (15th Annual).

(Part 7) EROTICA Genre
CRITIC Armond White on
LL Cool J — “Six Minutes of Pleasure”
Director: Marcus Nispel

NOTE: Something happened with the projectionist. This particular video started late. LL is already rapping when the video played.

Here are excerpts of some writing by Critic Armond White on this music video.

“…By decorating the set as a bedroom filled with the toys and sunshine of a child’s romper room, Director Marcus Nispel plays out the complex of sexuality with bemused clarity…”

“…LL’s physical activity — he is shown playing with outrageously, blatantly suggestive double-entendre items as that bouncing ball, a phallic balloon, the nipple of a baby’s bottle – - shows him in thrall of (symbolic) eroticism. Nispel does as much with the rap stars smile as with his supple-sinewed torso and warm-brown flesh. L.L embodies the pleasures of the flesh and his boyish happiness over this discovery keeps the story in the song from being sordid (or exploitative as in last year’s hilarious, bodacious Big Ol’ Butt video in which female posteriors rose and heaved like the floats in a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.) “

“Nispel’s camera (and candied) sensuality plays a sly trick on commercial iconography; as in C + C Music Factory’s ‘Gonna Make You Sweat’, he breaks down Madison Avenue’s color barrier by emphasizing merchandise, then fetishizing it through its manipulation by performers of color. Underneath 6 Minutes’ parody of a Saturday morning Mattel toy spot (complete with L.L’s Cat-In-The-Hat wriggly, expandable headgear), Nispel virtually advertises libidinal excess. Madonna’s ‘Justify My Love’ had nothing as lubricious as LL’s wet lips sucking a baby bottle filled with Kool-Aid, or as witty as the three fingered Mickey Mouse glove he offers to his playmate. LL and Nispel are deep into playtime; they’re bred-in-the-bone orgiasts in toyland. Their imaginative use of ‘innocent’ props is just short of pornographic and that distance is threatened by LL himself, who has the charm of the boy next door with something more…”

“…Nispel picks up on this thrill by keeping in rotation the nursery school colors; the primal, childlike lurching, humping, fingering gestures; the skin; the smiles; the healthy good humor…”

The City Sun, Sept 18-24, 1991

NOTE: In August of 1996, Critic Armond White devoted an entire music video presentation to the work of Director Marcus Nispel, the director of this music video.

Surprise Guest in the audience!

EROTICA Genre
Armond White on
LL Cool J – Six Minutes of Pleasure
Director: Marcus Nispel

Here are some Armond White quotes on the music video.

LL COOL J Six Minutes Of Pleasure – The City Sun — Sept 18-24 1991

…By decorating the set as a bedroom filled with the toys and sunshine of a child’s romper room, Director Marcus Nispel plays out the complex of sexuality with bemused clarity…

…LL’s physical activity — he is shown playing with outrageously, blatantly suggestive double-entendre items as that bouncing ball, a phallic balloon, the nipple of a baby’s bottle – - shows him in thrall of (symbolic) eroticism. Nispel does as much with the rap stars smile as with his supple-sinewed torso and warm-brown flesh. L.L embodies the pleasures of the flesh and his boyish happiness over this discovery keeps the story in the song from being sordid (or exploitative as in last year’s hilarious, bodacious Big Ol’ Butt video in which female posteriors rose and heaved like the floats in a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.)

Nispel’s camera (and candied) sensuality plays a sly trick on commercial iconography; as in C + C Music Factory’s ‘Gonna Make You Sweat’, he breaks down Madison Avenue’s color barrier by emphasizing merchandise, then fetishizing it through its manipulation by performers of color. Underneath 6 Minutes’ parody of a Saturday morning Mattel toy spot (complete with L.L’s Cat-In-The-Hat wriggly, expandable headgear), Nispel virtually advertises libidinal excess. Madonna’s ‘Justify My Love’ had nothing as lubricious as LL’s wet lips sucking a baby bottle filled with Kool-Aid, or as witty as the three fingered Mickey Mouse glove he offers to his playmate. LL and Nispel are deep into playtime; they’re bred-in-the-bone orgiasts in toyland. Their imaginative use of ‘innocent’ props is just short of pornographic and that distance is threatened by LL himself, who has the charm of the boy next door with something more…

…Nispel picks up on this thrill by keeping in rotation the nursery school colors; the primal, childlike lurching, humping, fingering gestures; the skin; the smiles; the healthy good humor…

NOTE: In August of 1996, Critic Armond White devoted an entire music video presentation to the work of filmmaker Marcus Nispel, the director of this music video.

(PART 8) SAT, July 28, 2007 — SCANNERS 2007 Video Festival. Film Society of Lincoln Center in NYC. CRITIC Armond White’s “Official History of Music Video: An Introspective” Music Video Presentation (15th Annual).

(PART 8) EXOTICA Genre
CRITIC Armond White on
U2 “Mysterious Ways”
Director: Stephane Sednaoui