In her video for “I Want to Know What Love Is,” Mariah gives the fans—and the haters—exactly what they’ve demanded. Even recording this song, a classic 1980s power-ballad, is a return to previous roots: Mariah’s choice of songs from her debut to 1997’s “Butterfly” centered on ballads rather than uptempo dance-oriented songs. In fact, one of Mariah’s achievements before any other mainstream pop-soul artist was in making successful remixes of her hit songs for the dance market, which she and her remixers did around 1994 with the “Daydream” album. In part, the original songs were not fast enough for the dancefloor.

Alone, covering a song that returns to Mariah’s roots is unexceptional. She has already produced a show-stopper, tear-jerker, over-the-top ballad approach for a single, covering Phil Collins’s “Against All Odds” on her 1999 album “Rainbow.” The new feat is remarkable because of its music video. Director Hype Williams abandoned the storyline approach and instead made a concert-like event, choreographed down, shot by shot, to the last detail. The video opens with a fly-over of the New York Yankee’s stadium, showing a packed house and then quick glimpses of the crowd. Mariah is shown from afar in the center of the field, standing on a carpet emblazoned with her trademark butterfly insigna. As her vocals begin over the music, the camera focuses on her with a close-up head-and-shoulders shot that reveals something very powerful: Mariah doesn’t look like she has in other recent videos or television appearances, in fact, she looks like she did in the music videos and photographs for her first album in 1991. Though 40 years old now, Mariah looks nearly exactly as she did at 20. She is wearing her hair in the same dark, curly, long style that began her career, and is sporting a short yet tasteful black dress and knee-high black boots. Though sophisticated, her outfit is also classic and somber, only accented by her large butterfly ring and charm-bracelet, which have become standard visual pieces of the Mariah iconography. (Mariah’s 2002 album was entitled “Charmbracelet” and the butterfly has long symbolized her brand.)

Three giant screens behind Carey repeat video of her face, replicating in most of these shots similar close-ups in her first music video for “Vision of Love.”

It becomes clear as the video progresses that the footage is not of Carey from years ago, but was shot anew for this song in 2009.

Various crowd members also take the focus: a selection of women with home-made posters representing Mariah fans, a gay couple, a woman in a wheelchair and a man in medical scrubs who stands behind her, two fathers with their sons, and a female police officer or security guard. The song is an over-the-top ballad and the emotional gravitas of the people “at” the concert feels overly done and an almost laughable plea for an emotional response, but the real star is Mariah. Looking as she did when she first entered the public eye and singing a song that climaxes to a rousing conclusion complete with gospel choir and Mariah’s trademark whistle-register high notes, she has stepped back in time, recapturing her original feel and musical approach and everything her fans loved about it.

The transformation of Mariah Carey back to her self at age 20 is, though, the haunting aspect of the video. In 2005, with her single “Fly Like a Bird,” Mariah already proved that she still had her whistle register and could hit those high notes. At several live performances of “Fly Like a Bird” and “We Belong Together,” Carey appeared slender, attractive, and still had the star-power for which she once was renowned. Proving this all over again would seem superficial. But her transformation here was just that: not a matter of showcasing beauty or sex appeal, but of trading in iconography. Whether Mariah looks sexier or more attractive with her dark curls instead of the flat-ironed blond locks she’s sported in recent years is a moot point. By returning to her orginal look, Mariah claims her original power in the music industry and states that she’s neither left it nor lost it.

This transformation, the journey back in time with Mariah, raises more complex questions of reality. To borrow from the linguist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva’s work, let us look at Mariah via Kristeva’s literary concept of “le vréel,” or the “true-real.” What is true might not, in fact, always be what seems real. Mariah Carey, of course, did not revert to herself at age 20. Even appearing so, she carries two more decades of personal and musical experience as a public icon. Everything about her now is different. Yet how do we know Mariah Carey, or any pop star? Mainly via their music, videos, television appearances, marketing, and concerts. Since everything we know of Carey is built on how she and industries have branded her to us, it is fair to say—in contrast to a non-star—that our experience with her is entirely a media interface. These days, the process of experiencing a pop star is even more nuanced because there is a more intimate level created via the Internet and social media. In paradox, there is also more of a situation of removal because more and more we have this experience from afar, through a digital window instead of a real one. We do not have lunch with Mariah Carey, we do not even catch a glimpse of her walking down the street; most do not see her from the balcony of a theatre while attending her concert. We know her via TV apperances and music vidoes, magazine interviews and websites.

Kristeva named her concept of “le vréel” as an effort to examine the meaning of “the real” within the scope of modernist art—a meaning that would be in keeping with the Lacanian of “truth.” That is, Kristeva realized that modernist visual artists and writers were charting novel territories that ventured beyond the typical emotional explorations of the romantic era. Modernists were treating truth and actuality differently, and she recognized that at times what was real and what was true could differ in modernist works, so she desired a term that would indicate when both truth and reality were one and the same. For many postmodern pop stars, Kristeva’s musings on modernism can come in handy: artists such as Prince, Kate Bush, and Madonna often performed in their music and videos as actors, representing both themselves (as artists) but also a character in a song or music video. In such cases, what is true is not always what is real. That said, Mariah Carey is one major pop artist who never strayed into the arena of fantasy much—despite having a hit song entitled “Fantasy”—and has been very literal in most of her work. If she is singing a song about a break-up, that is pretty much where it starts and where it ends. When she sings the pronoun “I,” you can believe that on at least some level she truly means herself. Much of this is Mariah’s own doing: no matter how hard her record producers, video directors, or marketing agents try to put Mariah in a certain context, she seems to always betray her true self for better or worse.

Thus, when we see Mariah in this video in 2009 looking—and singing—just as if it were 1991, we have to take her at her word. Whatever makeup or post-production were used to portray Mariah as we view her matters not, for we have as consumers become accustomed to seeing entire characters in movies made up only of digital artistry and not flesh-and-blood actors; we have become accustomed to never seeing a photograph of a pop star that hasn’t been retouched to paint her—quite literally—in the best light possible. Mariah, as much as Dr. Who, has become a time-travelling presence. More than this though, Mariah makes time and date unimportant: she is saying in essence that she can sing a song in 2009 that she might have done in 1992, or she could have done for that matter in 1995 the songs she recorded in 2005. Time makes no difference—she’s beyond time. What is real here, too, is not what is true, and the music video is a prime modality for such expressions. The truth is that this video, for Mariah’s second single off her 2009 studio album, comes after a very contemporary, fast-paced “new Mariah” song and video which was her first single (“Obsessed”). The truth also is, Mariah and Hype Williams clearly desired to recapture part of Mariah’s most successful, most respected period as a musical artist. However, the reality as we encounter it is something removed from these motives, as the reality is that we see a concert that never happened, in a stadium that is a real place but was not probably filmed on location (the stadium appears to be computer-rendered), and we see a Mariah from bygone days.

What makes this video important is that it calls out, in a very obvious way, what music videos have become and how, oddly enough, they can betray themselves most readily when they are trying to portray a “real” event. It didn’t happen. The whole thing may have been shot in pieces on a soundstage. Yet what we wind up watching is supposed to be a concert, because of course, that is where you’re supposed to see a singer sing in “reality.”



Justin Bieber’s video for the remixed “Somebody to Love” is even more complex and telling of what videos have become. While Bieber and Usher, his mentor who sings guest vocals on this track, sing and dance in this video, they do not give a concert or even pretend to give one. Instead, they dance on a soundstage with dance crews that recently have come to national attention via televised dance competition shows.

Videos focused on dance are not new. It was a popular approach to music videos in the early 1990s when dance remixes and dance music jumped in popularity with a mass market. The approach, in essentials, traces back to Hollywood musicals of the 1930s and 1940s. We now see, in 2010, from an artist who is 16, a video whose design and approach conjure 1992. Even the music, while contemporary, echoes the styles explored two decades ago. In 2000 the Justin Bieber of that day, Aaron Carter, released upbeat numbers, too. They emphasized dance but not with the complexity and focus on remixes that Bieber has brought about—probably due to Usher’s experienced soul-pop tradesmanship steering Bieber on this course. Moreover, the video’s director, Dave Meyers, has made a career of directing music videos for pop singers such as Pink, Brandy, and Shakira. That is, stars who have been huge sellers in the mass-pop market over the 2000s.

Is this just a cycle? Do teen pop stars always vary between slow ballads and dance numbers, simply meeting expectations? The band Hanson was the only real exception to this trend with teen idols because they focused on songwriting and instrumentation foremost. While some of their songs were remixed early into their career, it was a post-event peripheral to their music. Bieber is only another example. Goldfrapp’s newest single, “Rocket,” suggests influences of trance-pop artist Grace, circa 1997. Lady Gaga has made as much or more news due to her videos and costumes than her actual music, so her popularity further signals a renewal of the music video despite the demise of the video format of MTV.

Bieber’s song “Somebody to Love” in this video remix has been hailed as an “Italian disco” dance remix, and while interesting, the Backstreet Boys were doing the same thing in 1997. There is nothing in this song, or its video, unexplored during the early and late 1990s. It is unknown whether the producers and remixers called from Usher’s early hits, or, crafted the most dancefloor-friendly and teen-friendly beats and images. For the artist who dominates teen music currently, though, it is significant that the song could have been produced over a decade ago. The only new aspect is Bieber’s flat-billed New Era cap. While the dance crews and their moves are called contemporary (n.b., nice moonwalk), hip-hop dance sculpted these styles at least a decade ago.

Few of Bieber’s fans know this history. Bieber’s youth, and that of his fans, allows for repeating pop styles. It goes over the fans’ heads. While Mariah and her video director Hype Williams banked on people recognizing Mariah’s video for “I Want to Know What Love Is” as a return to her earliest days as a pop artist, Bieber relies on the opposite: a total lack of historical knowledge.

While Mariah’s video takes on all the trappings of reality—a real, known, stadium, an apparent concert, a cover of a well-known song—Justin Bieber’s video takes the opposite approach, locating him on a soundstage that is nowhere, with jump cuts from one place to another, never centering Bieber in any veracity. In further paradox, Bieber’s video is the one that feels more honest—despite its ample gloss, it feels innocent and Bieber’s youthfulness and still-unsure dance moves make it somewhat endearing. At times, it feels like a luxurious high-school talent show.

Mariah, in contrast, feels totally unreal. She doesn’t look real, the stadium may or may not be computer-rendered, a choir appears from nowhere to close the song with Mariah. The camera keeps focusing on certain members of the crowd as if to tell their stories but we can only assign our own meaning to these abstractions. Is the gay couple in focus because they’re gay? Because they found “what love is” together? What about the cop/security officer? She looks sad, but why? Is this a nod to New York and 9-11 or to the challenges female officers face in their work? We will never know. The woman in the wheelchair and her caregiver in scrubs is perhaps the biggest mystery: she has suffered through something and there is platonic love. Or, is this her husband or boyfriend? The pale sky blue of his scrubs suggest a physician or nurse, not an orderly. Did she fall in love with her doctor, or did a kind surgeon take some time off to take this woman to Mariah’s concert?

Bieber’s video tells no story, yet it presents us with the type of rapid, entertaining, images we expect in today’s media, albeit with some sense of nostalgia for the music videos of times past. Mariah’s video seems all about telling a story, but then it doesn’t. As film has changed from “what will happen next?” to “what the hell is happening?” the narrative is fractured. Even without the conventions of storytelling, it helps to have a plot, and Mariah and Hype Williams don’t provide one. Instead, we get Mariah going back in time, declaring her timelessness. Bieber however is apparently unaware that he travels through time too, landing somewhere in the early 1990s right alongside Mariah.

Music videos have become their own art form. Well-educated, talented, directors like Dave Meyers can make a good living only directing music videos and not embark into longer-form films. The aesthetics of Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber’s recent videos are such that they take the music video format as a given and also reach back to a time when the form was still greatly evolving. The important aesthetic aspect of this in both videos is that they place themselves outside reality whether via their intentions or despite them.

Music videos encompass nearly every field of design—film-making, photography, graphic design, fashion design, acting, sound design, even music—however, many take the easiest of ways out of doing anything truly creative. Mariah’s video has its merits: Hype Williams’s director of photography produced a glowing, beautiful, video. Mariah, once again, looks amazing. Justin Bieber’s video is also enjoyable and is a runaway hit with his fans.

These videos remind me of something I discerned while a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design though: film students at that school had a great grasp of the technical side of their craft—from lighting to post-production, they had it down—but their stories, their scripts, were generally mundane and lacked depth. I had many friends in the department and only two were able—or even interested—in telling stories with film. It seems my other friends there may have graduated to making music videos.

Videos like Bieber’s were hot in the early 1990s mainly because the budgets and technology to produce such videos had arrived at that point in the game. Also, the dance music that was becoming popular in mainstream pop in the 1990s was well-suited to the format of dance videos without overt storylines. Mariah isn’t the first singer to have a music video depict a concert that never was—in fact, I think she has herself taken this approach before in the video for “Hero” and possibly others. Yet the difference this time is that we both expect more and perhaps project more: without the novelty of music videos, without anything new in these specific ones, we’re searching for something untold.

Instead, Mariah, Bieber, their directors and their crews dive back into the past. A safe move, perhaps, but one that is uncanny only because in both cases above it is disconcerting: everything old is new again? Or, is it that everything fresh was done long ago? Lady Gaga’s much-acclaimed music videos, compared to Laurie Anderson’s 1980s video for “Sharkey’s Day,” are mundane, trivially throwing crumbs of the avant garde into the mainstream. Which, well, bands like Erasure and EMF did with music videos in 1991.

Several newspapers and blogs are running long, ongoing, impressive discussions about the TV show “Mad Men.” It seems that after years of “reality” TV, a period piece on the 1960s is the best we can do now for television, and perhaps that’s not too bad. Yet everything old is new, again. Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber bring us that tiding and the additional greeting that nothing is really real anymore, either. Not even for the most mainstream pop, whether by intention or failure. In art, we do say it’s all been done before, but in the 1980s through the early 2000s and reaching an apex in the 1990s, that was not yet the case in the arena of music videos. Now, at least apparently, it is.

About the Author: Mike Walker is a writer, theorist, journalist, and consultant focused on issues germane to international development and language-based communications. His other professional areas of interest include social epidemiology, legal history, aviation development, and cultural theory. He studied fine arts and architecture at the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Rhode Island School of Design. His original research and other academic work has been published in: AirMed, Goldenseal, EcoFlorida, BrightLights Quarterly, the ATA Chronicle, Multilingual Computing and Technology and other journals. His journalism in: The Florida Times-Union, The North Florida News Daily, Satellite Magazine, Twisted Ear, and other publications. His poetry in: Meanie, the Church Wellesley Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and other publications. He lives in Gainesville, Florida