Last weekend, Kanye West’s ‘Runaway’ video premiered on MTV. You may have heard about it; if not, its purpose is essentially summed up with a simple fact that it is 34 minutes and 32 seconds long and toys with the boundaries between music video and feature film.

The video, about 10 minutes longer than a television sitcom, focuses on West rescuing a phoenix-woman from death after falling from the sky. He nurses her back to health and subsequently falls in love with her while introducing her to his world of sparkly pyrotechnics, brilliant sunsets and ballerinas.

While the short dialogue is wooden and the storyline doesn’t flow, West isn’t stretching out a four-minute song into a video far beyond its length. Instead, ‘Runaway’ features a multitude of songs from West’s ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ album. It just might be the first full-album video of its kind, but its length isn’t as original.

Today’s generation of college students have been familiar with music videos since the start of standard pop videos of the late 90s. Those lasted as long as the song typically consisted of the artist dancing around in situations relevant to the song’s lyrics. And while MTV may dedicate most of its airtime to reality TV rather than music videos nowadays, music videos seem to have hit a sudden resurgence in popularity, as the boundaries of length and creativity are being pushed for the first time in decades and YouTube is more popular than MTV.

This past March, the Lady Gaga and Beyonce collaboration on the song ‘Telephone’ sent pop-culture addicts into a frenzy. There was something artistic about women dressed as superheroes fighting in diners. The video lasted 10 minutes and was on the receiving end of much critical acclaim.

While some feel such creativity is positive, Leah Schiano, a sophomore majoring in English, disagrees.

‘I think that it is unnecessary for music videos to be that long,’ Schiano said. ‘It takes away from the music itself and they are making more of a mini-movie than something that reflects the music.’

OK Go’s most recently released video, ‘White Knuckles,’ is a prime example of how modern artists are pushing creative boundaries and straying from the lyrics. The video has little to do with the actual song; the band doesn’t even finish the song. Instead, they stack plastic buckets and play with dogs. But odd techniques like this seem to intrigue viewers ‘ the video has had more than 7 million views on YouTube.

‘It’s more appealing to me than a photoshopped, multifaceted video because it’s all in one shoot,’ said Amanda Carswell, a freshman majoring in English. ‘They’re doing things that are more visually appealing and creative than music videos that have multiple takes.’

For a band like OK Go, these type of videos are commonplace; back when videos were something new and innovative, they regularly reached the creative and artistic highs that West, Gaga and OK Go are striving for now.

Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ was released in December 1983 and was 14 minutes long ‘ it was more of a short movie than music video. The Guinness Book of World Records noted it as the ‘most successful music video’ of all time. The video was also inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Jackson’s ‘Bad’ video, directed by acclaimed actor, director, producer and screenwriter Martin Scorsese, was also of motion picture quality.

So is the trend of longer videos a throwback to the days of MJ? Are today’s artists striving to be like, or paying tribute to, the late King of Pop? They just may be.

West’s ‘Runaway’ features cult-like worship for Jackson, with burning torches and hoods that resemble the Ku Klux Klan’s. It may come off as frightening, but West insists he is just trying to convey the love the entertainment industry has for Jackson. He goes as far as to say, in a post-premiere interview with MTV, that the obsession reaches an almost religious point: ‘The greatest, biggest pop-cultural figure of all time, arguably bigger than Jesus Christ, is Michael Jackson.’

In a different technological world than that of the early 1980s, if you’ve missed any of these videos, you don’t have to wait for them to repeat on MTV or VH1. Videos like these have a new-age medium for viewership, the Internet. And they’re going viral, just a click away on YouTube. Just make sure that if you intend to watch them, you have 35 minutes to spare.