Medium Cool

“Medium Cool will be indispensable for those studying music video, as well as of interest to anyone interested the effect the internet and third generation mobile phone technologies on how audio-visual material is accessed. It may also be of general interest to fans of the music video form, and the fact that many of the videos analysed in Medium Cool are available on YouTube makes reading this book a great pleasure. This, as much as anything else, marks this book as initiating a new era in music video scholarship.” - Matthew Campora, M/C Reviews

“A timely volume. . . . Medium Cool features two excellent essays on the audio-visuality of Elvis Presley.“ - Darren Tofts, Screening the Past

“The essays are intriguing and draw on a combination of music-video scholarship, television studies, popular music studies, and popular musicology. . . . This is a book for those interested in intersections between music and visual cultures and aesthetics. Highly recommended.” - M. Goldsmith, Choice

“Perhaps most intriguing is how this collection illustrates the possibilities for music videos to enlarge our understanding of the potential for the construction of meaning via their particular forms of narrative. . . . Medium Cool helps us see how the music video, by pairing song and visual, opens up new perspectives on postmodern criticism.” - J. O’Neill, Afterimage

“Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton’s omnibus of thought-provoking—and in several cases canon-altering—essays are poised to correct the ‘‘myopia’’ of long-entrenched scholarship on the music video. . . . This is a refreshing and pleasurable compilation which should revitalize and reposition discussions of the music video.” - Michael T. Spencer, Popular Music and Society

“This book, well documented and carefully edited, seems to be a major contribution to the literature of popular music and its visual forms. One comes away from it with a greater appreciation for the innovativeness and the challenges involved with this art form.” - Jack Estes, Journal of American Culture

“What makes Medium Cool particularly interesting for scholars and relevant for music video studies is its combination of historical grounding and theoretical innovation in a wide variety of contexts.” - Paula Cordeiro, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

“What makes this anthology especially interesting is its long historical view to the 1950s’ predecessors of what would become the music video.” - Chris Sterling, Communication Booknotes Quarterly

“Medium Cool reopens the long-dormant field of music video studies in sharp and insightful ways. With a keen eye on questions of history, aesthetics, and globalization, the essays collected here lay out a bold new map for how future scholars should approach the study of music video in the post-MTV age.” - Gilbert B. Rodman, author of Elvis After Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend

“Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton’s Medium Cool is a valuable and timely anthology that moves the scholarly discussion of music video beyond MTV, exploring the past, present, and future of the medium. It also introduces readers to important new voices in music and media studies.” - Gayle F. Wald, author of Shout, Sister, Shout! The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe

“This lively collection brings music video studies up to date and expands its analytical horizons. One of the book’s great strengths is the methodological clarity of the articles assembled here, making this a very useful collection for teaching purposes. Even more impressively, this book moves beyond MTV in several important directions. It charts the international circulation of music video, provides background on understudied historical ancestors of the video clip, and introduces readers to emerging genres of audiovisual expression. This volume will be the new standard work on music video.” - Will Straw, author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America