Genre 4: Postmodern Style

Short Films - Eco (1981)
Short films are a medium which do not have to have a specific genre. However feature films and short films differ in that they generally focus on one or few characters and a single strand narrative. Short films can also be anti-narrative, surrealist and are often experimental, meaning they can have ambiguous or open meanings for the audience to interpret and process. Postmodern theorist, Jacques Derrida said "the law of the law of genre . . . is precisely a principle of contamination, a law of impurity". In relation to genres she believes that music videos are currently in 'genre-crossover' with short films. Many narrative videos use conventions from short films and in fact can be classed as short films. Below is Portishead - To Kill A Dead Man which is a short ten minute film including the song. We can see how it uses different conventions like a beginning, middle, end and characters to create a short film. 

Music videos are a medium to directly appeal to youth sub-cultures by reinforcing generic elements of musical genres. Music videos are used as a way of pop-promotion which are used to raise the profile of the song and the artist. Dyer would agree with this idea however believes it is more focused on the artists promotion "Music videos are postmodern texts whose main purpose is to promote a star persona (Dyer, 1975)." To do this they do not need to be literal representations of the song or lyrics but just include the artists performance in order to sell the star as an image. 
In terms of genre, narrative and performance some videos choose to combine both. Others include themes which may fit around the lyrics of the song or society which is open to experimental and controversial content. Generic conventions stay the same however the style (which is the look of the video) changes between music genres. Relating this back to the idea of music videos aiming to directly appeal to youth, certain  common themes apply in videos to do this: 

Teen angst
Rebellion
Romance
Nostalgia
Nihilism
Coming of age rituals (e.g. the prom, falling in love, losing your virginity etc.)
Tribalism: Popularity verses unpopularity, e.g. cliques
Bullying

Juvenile Delinquency: Moral panics and the teenager as a folk devil

The currency of ‘cool’

Hedonism: living purely for pleasure

Friendship

Avril Lavigne is a prime example of a artist who appeals to youth subcultures. In her earlier videos, rebellion was a main theme in her videos and not conforming to society. In her video 'Complicated' it shows her and a group of friends causing havoc at a mall, possibly conforming to what society thinks about teenagers. The video shows themes of: friendship, 'cool', shows youths as folk devils, rebellion and teenage angst. The lyrics are relating to romance however which isn't shown in the video as much as the rebellion side.