The Music Video Dictatorship (La Dictadura del Videoclip, English Synopsis)

'The Music Video Dictatorship. Musical Industry and Manufactured Dreams'

Author: Jon E. Illescas (Cartoons by Miguel Brieva)

Lenght: 608 p.

Language: Spanish
Firs Edition: December 2015
Second Edition: September 2016

Synopsis:

How has Katy Perry finished working for the Pentagon and Shakira for the President of the United States? Why are there so few commited artists in the midst of economical crisis? How do the songs which all of us know became fashionable?What's the relationship between music videos and the lack of critical awareness of a large proportion of young people? In this piece  of multidisciplinary work, the hidden connections between pop celebrities, the cultural industry, drug mafias, high level  politics and global capitalism are expossed. Analysing the assets and the operation of the big corporations run the music industry, this book reveals how the dominant elite of a ruling class reproduce what they deem to be appropiate values and ideologies to renew their power.

With the development of the Internet, music video has become one of the cultural product most readily consumed by young people globally. This is the dominant story telling device of our time, eclipsing the traditional mediums of  books, films, videogames or TV programmes. Based on the analysis of  the 500 most viewed YouTube music videos, this book exposes the constants and the absences of this audiovisiual stream which influences millions of young people's lives. In addition to this, it maps the critical biography of the 20 most important pop stars highlighting controversial aspects of their road to power. Moreover, ´The Music Video Dictatorship' analyses the music which is swimming against the tide, exposing the censorship which it faces and suggesting its future possibilites.

An explosive book that, in an entertaining way and with a sense of humor, brings together the clarity of its exposition, theoretical coinsideration and scientific rigour. An original work that is not like anything you have read before and will be essential not only for those who want to critically understand the current pop music, but also for those activists or educators who want to build a better world.

What the media says?

“An explosive work in which the rigour and the depth are not at odds with an entertaining reading and a sense of humor” DiarioFolk.

“Illescas has written such an intersting book, with highly detailed and indisputable interest which grabs you from the first chapters” Periodistas en Español.

“This essential book is pure dynamite” Nega, raper from Los Chikos del Maíz.

“Illescas makes a major contribution in recent decades to update the Marxist analytical of reality (…) This is a book you can read with the same intensity as a good novel” Rafael Díaz-Salazar in Viento Sur.

“Rarely the mainstream music video has been so extraordinarily analyzed as in this book” RTVE.

“The reader will discover the music video world, the tools to understand cultural domination, the mainstream music video analysis, the ideological reproduction and the passive consensus across the cultural industry” Manuel S. Jardí in Le Monde Diplomatique.

“Sex, drugs and pop: the music video dictatorship in the YouTube Era” Carlos Garsán en Valencia Plaza.

“The music video used to be a format as omnipresent as poorly studied. For that reason we needed a book like “Music Video Dictatorship” Víctor Lenore in El País.

“Music is not innocent and “The Music Video Dictatorship” is an excellent book to answer a crucial question: How does music influence our lives?” David Becerra in El Confidencial.

Author

Jon E. Illescas (Orihuela -Spain-, 1982) is PhD “Cum Laude” in Sociology and Communications from the University of Alicante and graduated in Fine Arts by Miguel Hernández University of Elche with several prizes like “Final Degree Award” and “5 Stars Student Award”. In addition, he is a plastic artist and the inventor of Socioreproductionism under the pseudonym of “Jon Juanma”. He has writen more than 60 publications about Culture, Geopolitics, Art, Communications and Economics. Some of them have been translated into Portuguese, Italian and English. In 2012, he published his first book, Nepal, la revolución desconocida (“Nepal, the unknown revolution”). He worked several years in the University of Alicante and Complutense University of Madrid. The results of his doctoral thesis were reported in mainstream media in Spain and Latin America. This study was the scientific basis of “The Music Video DictatorShip”.