The mass media can be described as a form of communication designed to reach a vast audience without any personal contact between the senders and receivers. This includes several institutions, including books, magazines, adverts, newspapers, radio, television, cinema, and videos that occupy a central and essential role in our lives. I will specifically be exploring and discussing the relationship between fashion and the music video. Both are considered to have a symbiotic relationship; where one cannot operate without the other; I am looking to investigate the to what extent this statement is true; I want to investigate whether the contemporary music video has become an advertisement for empty capitalist ideologies.
The mass media can also be referred to as a 20th century "Pop Culture"; it shares the same origins, including popular music, film, television, radio, video game, book and comic book publishing industries.
Modern urban mass societies have been heavily influenced by the introduction of new technologies of sound and image broadcasting, and the growth of mass media industries, especially the film and television industry, which are reliant on interaction (in order to make money, and maintain capitalism) between those industries that promote, and those, that consume their products.
Dave Harker (1992) points out that that the 1960s was a period heavily influenced and dominated by rock music in particular; this was the earliest example of popular music taking form, for example it became popular radio play, record releases and sales were at their highest during this particular period, and rock was being rotated over a range of media including films and theatrical theatre shows such as Sound Of Music.
Twenty years later pop rock music was arguably at it's most