JS: Music Video Analysis

Genre and Representation – Oh Love – Green Day

This music video has multiple features that you would expect from a music video, according to Andrew Goodwin’s model in ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ (1992, Routledge). This single contains ‘Green Day’ conforming to genre characteristics by doing a performance in the video that is bold and charismatic, both of which reflect characteristics you would expect from a rock band such as ‘Green Day’. The relationship between the visuals and lyrics are contradicting, as the lyrics are emotive and have connotations of poignancy and heartbreak ‘I’m wearing my heart on a noose’. However, the visuals feature the band smiling, symbolising joy. Conversely, the music and the visuals correlate to an extent; the tempo starts at a slow pace, which amplifies the song’s themes which are dark and depressive, although the song’s tempo increases during the track, which highlights a contradiction between the music and visuals.  As a dominant purpose of music videos is to promote the single and the artist, a multitude of close-up shots are evident, and these boost the band’s star image. This is shown in this music video, with lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong having many close-ups throughout. Finally, this video and single is instantly recognisable given to the aural and visual motifs the band have. This is the distinct grain of voice Armstrong has as well as the band logo, whose font is unique to them. 

The band are represented as reckless, rebellious rockers which adds to their star persona. ‘Green Day’ in the video are prevalent and all three musicians are shown clearly through the use of close-ups and mid-shots, which consequently boosts the star image of the band. ‘Green Day’ are a band with immense pedigree and success, so they are used to playing in front of thousands of people in the world’s biggest music venues. For this reason, they are shown as proud and flamboyant  in their performance-based video, in which the members have colourful guitars and an authoritative style, representing ‘Green Day’ as a ‘major’ rock band. Their costume and make-up used makes them appear more youthful, so they appeal more to the younger generation of music fans too.

Furthermore, females have been portrayed in a negative manner. According to Laura Mulvey’s essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema’, this video contains heteronormative discourse and features of ‘The Male Gaze’. This is where the audience are forced to adopt the perspective of a heterosexual man, and this is due to the representation of the women in the video. Many ‘meat shots’ are shown, with close ups and extreme close ups on parts of the female body, such as the lips, eyes and backside. This relegates the women to the status of ‘objects for consumption’, as it also denies the females agency. In addition, studies by Erving Goffman et al about the image of women in popular culture are important when considering this music video. The women have an artificial look, as they are thin, tall and long legged, which is not a true reflection of women in reality. This reinforces the residual ideology that all women in the media have to appear as an archetypal ‘perfect’ woman. The women in the video are also shown in a decorated role, as the male members of ‘Green Day’ are the prevalent people in the video. Commodification is highlighted in the video, when the members of ‘Green Day’ are shown groping some of the women inappropriately. This fails to challenge new beliefs that women are equal to men in modern-day society, as they are portrayed as pleasure objects, instead of equals to men, which they are and should be in the twenty-first century.

Institution and Audience - Uprising - Muse

This music video would most likely be consumed in a variety of different methods world-wide. It has been distributed to ‘iTunes’, where customers can buy the music video, and also on the video site ‘Youtube’, where the public can view it for free. As the record label want to maximise their capital, they would be willing to provide a large budget for a band with the global appeal ‘Muse’ have.  As the band’s reputation sees them as enigmatic and creative, they have released numerous videos with artistic elements to them. This video also has some creative parts to it, with the featuring of a teddy bear uprising. This is enigmatic and thus encourages repeatability of the video, which is what the band and the record label would have aimed to do. The use of narrative fuzz adds to this, as the story is quite unclear to the audience. However, this is mainly a performance-based video, made for commercial purposes – to make money and to boost the band’s star image.

The audience would have a focused viewing of this instead of an ambient one, as the music made and the performance are the dominant things in the video. As well as online, the video would also be distributed to music channels, for example, MTV. This would help make the channel as well as the artist profits, while the band’s name and reputation will also become more well-known than it already is, due to the promotion and hype that will spread as a result of this video being released ahead of the new album. Hype would spread through word-of-mouth, as consumers would talk to each other about the new single. This would also occur online, where on social messaging sites such as ‘Facebook’ and ‘MySpace’, people would talk about the video.

Narrative and Media Language - Street-Spirit (Fade Out) - Radiohead

This music video can be considered an art form. In ‘The End of Celluloid’ (Hanson, 2004) Matt Hanson states that ‘music video is a perfectly formed, contemporary moving image form’ and ‘music video is a place where the moving image avant-garde comes alive’. This suggests that music videos in the present today are not all commercial and creativity can still be achieved, such as in this video. This video is an expression of the kind of band ‘Radiohead’  are – enigmatic, adventurous, and uniquely intriguing. The video is post-modern in the sense that it draws on themes such as escaping reality. There is a link between the sounds from the instruments and the visuals shown, demonstrating amplification. The music is melancholy and slow, while the visuals show some depressing shots, such as the lead singer Thom Yorke appearingly unconscious on a car. However, the relationship between lyrics and visuals is disjunctive, for example, ‘cracked eggs, dead birds, scream as they fight for life’. This has no link to the shots we see in the video and instead, the lyrics probably have a social message within them, rather than showing this message clearly in the video.

In ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, the band’s image is being clearly constructed. This is one of the first Radiohead singles to become immensely popular, as it was released on just their second album. They are shown as mysterious and fascinating, as if they are independent from any other band there was at the time. This enigma and attitude to their music has persisted for two decades and the band still continue to surprise and force consumers to think about their artistic work. The use of camera work adds to this. The video uses special effects such as slow-motion to captivate the consumer and to encourage repeatability. The use of fade ins, fade outs, and varying camera angles such as high, low and canted, disorientate the viewer, creating the illusion of the post-modern world they have portrayed in the video. The editing was done with a slow-cutting rate, to maximise the effect of the slow-motion, and also to aim to evoke an emotive response from the consumer, for example, in the shot of the vicious dog trying to break free from his chain to attack a child. This symbolises the dangers, fears and limitations of the world and makes the audience feel saddened. In contrast, for the mise-en-scene, the clothing used by the band in the video is regarded normal in modern society. The use of a regular shirt and jeans characterises the band as normal, despite the strange on goings in the environment they are in. The video is shot in black and white, to further show a difference between the world made in the video and reality. The use of a storm in the video ensures the low-key lighting adds to the tension and drama of the opening to the video, while the storm symbolises danger and darkness. This immediately puts the audience in a state of disequilibrium from the start, while the continuing enigmatic shots add to the audience’s emotions of apprehension and uncertainty. Also, the setting is dark and remote, adding to the horror feel of the music video. Additionally, the use of non-verbal language again makes the video appear dark and mysterious, as the lead singer Yorke shows an expression of concern throughout the video, suggesting something is not right in the new reality the band find themselves in.

The video does not feature any references to popular culture, to which you can infer that they are independent from society. The use of postmodernism provides the feeling that the video is ‘ahead of its time’ so there would be no reference to culture in the modern day. The video is pastiche in the sense that it re-works ideas about what the future may hold or the possibilities the future may bring.