[DF] Deconstruction - Music Video (3)

Media Language

Enter Shikari - 'No Sleep Tonight' (Davey, 2009)




ENTER SHIKARI - NO SLEEP TONIGHT - official promo video

Enter Shikari | Myspace Music Videos

Original video on YouTube blocked in the UK due to WMG copyright claims

What is the 'message' or purpose of the video?
The businessman at the beginning of the video who becomes the antagonist is representative of big business. We can see this with help from Roland Barthe's semiotic codes, collected in 'Mythologies' (1958), and more specifically the semic code, through which we see that the man's suit holds connotations of business and professionalism. Juxtaposed to this, we see the protagonist's costume as being plain, ordinary clothes, which connotes a more ordinary person, who is therefore more relatable to the audience.  Through the various montages, the social myth is created that the businessman's greed, elitism and arrogance is causing huge world problems which he doesn't care about. The band (along with a large crowd) stand up to him and stand outside his house, and using the symbolic code this could perhaps be representative of a protest, and may be appealing to big businesses to feel guilt for their actions. The end of the video shows the antagonist curled up on the floor in distress, and this proairetic code suggests that big business will eventually crumble if the public does something about it.



The businessman on the left is angered by the crowd outside


What visual techniques are used to do this and why?

The businessman who represents big business is shown to not care about bumping into the lead singer at the beginning of the song, symbolic of 'trampling over the little man'. Perhaps most notably, however, is the quick montage shots which occasionally appear, showing various things such as nuclear explosions, huge oil spills, people smoking, deforestation. These short montages display the damage that big business causes, and that they don't care about it. This shows use of Barthe's cultural code Furthermore, the man's greed is emphasised when he gets out of the shower and a close-up of his feet is shown and we see him walking on money. Another close-up at the end of the video shows the businessman's crying face as he's curled up on the floor; his non-verbal language symbolising his succumbing to guilt.

One of the montage images at 1:36

Is there any intertextuality or references to popular culture? How does this create meaning for the audience?

Although there is no explicit intertextuality, many current events can be inferred from the text using Barthe's cultural code. The montages during the video show images such as nuclear explosions, destroyed buildings, deforestation and oil spills. The explosions may put an image in the audience's mind of one of the wars the UK and the USA are engaged in in the Middle East, and the oil spill may be referring to any of the oil spills in 2009, such as the one in southeast Queensland. For the audience, the juxtaposition of the montages with shots of the businessman will cause the audience to see that he, and, by extension, big business, is the cause.

The video could be considered postmodern in that it could be said to ironically use the common phrase 'How do you sleep at night?' to literally cause the man to get no sleep by standing outside his house shouting 'you're not getting any sleep tonight'. Irony is used in a similar way with the phrase 'swimming in money', when the businessman is shown to get out of the shower onto a mat of money.

The businessman steps onto money