F.O'C - Comparison of two music videos

Comparison: MisterWives 'Reflections' & Young Fathers 'SHAME'

How do music videos contribute to an artist’s metanarrative (Image style)?

·         For this comparison I’m looking at the music video for the mainstream, indie pop act MisterWives’ ‘Reflections’ against the intimate hip hop group, Young Fathers’ ‘SHAME’.

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I’ll start by looking at how the music videos conform to Goodwin’s theory. His theory was that all (mainstream) music videos abide by a set of rules.

·          Reflections is a track that intends to appeal to the youth with its upbeat feel-good melodies, a common characteristic of the genre. The video conforms to this by being set in a school full of rebellious adolescents as shown by their school uniforms and the paper props being scattered in the first 20 seconds. The smiles on the students faces also connote tones of fun, happiness and carefree attitudes.

·         It further runs parrallel to Goodwin’s theory with the tempo of the music having coherence with the visuals. As the song progresses the cutting rate increases and the students get more rebellious. The lyrics are amplified which is made apparent by words like “discipline” when in detention and “dissmissed every rule to abide by” during the food fight scene. This along with the slightly voyeristic treatment of the singers body through intentional pans up from her bare legs to her face prove that this is a conventional music video for the indie pop genre and also for mainstream music videos as a whole.

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SHAME on the other hand shows very few of these traits. Young Fathers don’t have a specifc genre but they do have hip hop themes running somewhat inconsitantly throghout their music. Be they hip hop or not, SHAME doesn’t demonstrate characteristics for any genre, with powerful visuals collectively creating a cryptic and possibly deeply metaphorical music video, one very much left to the viewer’s interpretaion. There is a contradicting relationship between the lyrics and the visuals however the relationship between the music and the visuals is relitively illustrative, with the cutting rate increasing as the song progresses and the actor/dancer doing seemingly impressionist dance. Apart from this the video doesn’t align itself with the conventions of other hip hop videos.

·         Looking at Dyer’s ‘Star’ theory, the two videos are nothing alike. His theory was that stars were constructed through a set of values to an end of some sort. Often to sell copies and to create an image of themselves.

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Reflections features the lead repeatedly, often at close ups. This and the fact that she and her band members are dressing up as school kids shows the stars as present, human and grounded. As an indi pop band they don’t want to seem self obsessed or serious and so the lighthearted, fun plot with elements of humour (american) is intended to make them seem relatable to a new and rapidly expanding audience. This is why I think that the purpose of this particular music video (the one that most people will search for, it being their album’s single) is to create a teen fan base that will make them the most money. Notice there is nothing artistic, risky or inventive about the film making. It’s completely plot driven. The plot revolves around a group of school kids who are rebelling against their teachers. This is aiming to create an air of anti authoritarianism surrounding the band, enough to make them seem ‘against the system’ and therefore appealing to oppinionated teens, but not enough to seem radicalist, a term and a state of mind most young people tend to avoid.

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On the other hand SHAME is almost the polar opposite of this. The film features a single actor. He’s not a member of the band and he doesn’t represent how the band present themselves at concerts and at award ceremonies. However perhaps the fact that the video seemingly has no relation to creating a star image has some relevence in itself. It could represent a band that hasn’t got any musical genre restrictions, after all they do said themselves that “a band that knows it’s genre is a band that’s failed”. This could be percieved as inside dyer’s ‘originality’ category for values stars can have. This originality comes more in the form of wierdness from the dance routine the film slowly disolves into. This routine was done by an alternative dancer. The film was an experimental production to focus on the fact that what you see on the outside (the first half of the film) is not the same as someone on the inside. This may be working in parallel with their featured album name- ‘White men are black men too’. This is synergy within a campaign but it isn’t being done to sell copies, it’s being done to send a message, something far more authentic and noble than Misterwives Star ethos.

·         In terms of Barthes codes the two films are interesting to look at.

·         The juxtaposition of the slo mo of the school kids throwing paper and obviously leaving school to the close up of the detention sign is part of the Hermeneutic code. This makes the audience guess why they’re in detention at the end of school and so keeps the audience captivated. However it’s done in a very linear fashion and so one by one we learn why the students (band members) are in detention. The same goes with the enigma code. The enigma arcs are generally very small with the question (enigma) being raised and it being almost instantly answered. The cutting rate being very fast means there isn’t a lot of time for in depth meanings to be decrypted by the audience and so almost everything is intended to be taken at face value. The moralities of the students rebelling against an institution designed to help them and is only available in very privileged societies is questionable however it is deemed acceptable and dismissed in first world countries as ‘youth spirits’ and is even encouraged in the media and the western culture with the same logic behind it that coined the phrase ‘boys will be boys’.

·         SHAME, although very alternative, doesn’t seem to have that much more in depth set of codes and meaning behind it than Reflections, albeit being more creative. However multiple viewings prove this wrong. The enigma and hermeneutic codes are seen to be used effectively in this film. It starts off with a young man walking aggressively along a road with a knife. The reason for the aggressiveness is not known and neither is it for the knife. This mystery captivates the audience, & the fact that we don’t actually discover any of these reasons causes the film to gain a replayability factor. The flash cuts to the boy’s bloodied face also creates a short nevertheless powerful enigma arc. The symbolic code to me is the catharsis of being able to be freed from pain and suffering and frustration by focussing on what makes you happy, in his case dancing. It’s an uplifting and liberating video in this respect. At first our instant judgement of the boy is that he is a ‘chav’ and is violent from his non-verbal language and his knife prop. By the end we can see that the only thing he is trying to fight is his own personal demons. This shows (for lack of a better phrase) that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Overall the audience can read into the film in as much depth as they choose, far more than its mainstream counterpart.