{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Okay, assuming you're still fishing for suggestions on what to write about: Michael Bay. Specifically, the Transformers series.", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/126580765368/", "html": "<div class=\"question\"><strong>Anonymous</strong> asked: Okay, assuming you're still fishing for suggestions on what to write about: Michael Bay. Specifically, the Transformers series.</div>\n<p>Uh. Would you believe I\u2019ve never seen any of the Transformers movies?</p><p>Michael Bay made <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmNEG8IFd_Y\" target=\"_blank\">this</a> (check out some pagan SEX rituals facts!) commercial for Victoria\u2019s Secret in 2010. TRY and tell me that\u2019s not exactly how you pictured a Michael Bay take on \u201csexy\u201d.</p><p>If you want some historical angle on things\u2026 okay. I\u2019d say the key to understanding Michael Bay is that he\u2019s from the first generation of directors to enter a field in which music videos were an established <i>thing</i>.</p><p>Like, do people even bother making jokes anymore about how MTV never plays music videos anymore? I know that was a thing in the late \u201890s/early \u201800s, and it was a thing because the abandonment was so jarring because the music video was THE art form of the 1980s and early \u201890s.</p><p>And music videos were known for bringing much quicker, more frequent, and more dynamic cuts than any other form of mass-market moving pictures up to that time, more intense and striking visuals, with extensive integration of visual and sound through-lines. And that spread out into other forms like TV (famously with 21 Jump Street and Miami Vice), commercials, and media, and Michael Bay\u2019s the obvious type specimen.</p><p>(I actually think there\u2019s an interesting development from early music videos, which drawing from stage shows (or even recording sessions) sold an *aesthetic*, while what narrative through-line there was was often the band literally performing the song; to mid\u2019\u201880s videos that aped short film and tried to set up stories; to the later\u00a0\u201890s perfection of the form that\u2026 pitched\u2026 what, a\u00a0\u201cdynamic aesthetic\u201d, where action sequences served the aesthetic and maybe gestured at a <i>theme</i> while not burdening themselves with narrative baggage like motivation or plot twists)<br/></p>"}