[MP] Deconstruction - Music Video

Institution & Audience

Kanye West - 'All Falls Down' (Milk, 2004)

This song entered the UK singles charts at #10, reaching a high point of #7 on the US Hot 100 chart 3 months later. This presence in the charts would likely mean that it would have been circulated on a number of music channels including MTV (due to the hip hop/soul genre of the track) and possilby 4Music for its chart credentials. This video is more likely to have been created for ambient viewing as the hook lyric 'It all falls down' is repeated frequently, meaning that viewers can dip in and out of watching the video but can still quickly recognise the song. 7 years on, the video is most likely to have Web 2.0 sites continuing its rotation, predominantly Youtube (current views at 2.5M) along with Facebook and Myspace.
The song was recorded by Larrabee Sound North, of Sony Music Studios. As such, the studio would have a sufficiently large budget to spend on the music video. this would mean, however, that because of the financial backing being provided by the label, the artist would have less influence in the creation of the music video, with Sony's image being far more important than the opinions of the artist. 


Genre and Narrative


Ok Go - 'White Knuckles' (Sie, 2010)

Goodwin's framework for identifying key features of music videos (Dancing in the Distraction Factory, 1992)
Genre Characteristics

'White Knuckles' by Ok go is an alternative rock song released in 2010. The  genre characteristics includes quirkiness, often comedic action codes and, in Ok Go’s case, something very different and original. This is obvious in the video, with the band ‘(being) the machines and they’re enabling and operating the dogs’.
Relationship between lyrics and visuals

The lyrics in the song relate well to the use of dogs in the video – ‘you’ll never get the paw prints out of the hen house’. Also, ‘so let your hair down now’ gives an image that something slightly outrageous is being done, which could be a reference to the dogs. This song is an example of amplification, as none of the lyrics are particularly relevant to the action codes of the video. The reference to ‘paws in the hen house’ is the only holding that the use of dogs has to the themes of the song.
Relationship between music and visuals
The music is very rhythmic, which is reinforced by the timings used in the video, which was actually filmed to a click track so that everything was in time. There were also around 10 dog trainers to keep the dogs in check and make sure they did what they were meant to.
Close-ups of the artist and star image motifs

This video is a continuous mid-shot of the blue background, with the band and dogs performing within this space. This reduces the importance of each member of the band and supports instead the image of the entire band and their meta-narrative.
Notion of looking

There aren’t any references to the notion of looking, although first person mode is used throughout the video as in most music videos.
Intertextual References
There are not really any intertextual references in the video, as Ok Go prefer not to copy any ideas that have been explored before. However, perhaps Crufts (dog show) is being referred to with the trained dogs performing tricks in time to music.
Art or Advertisement

This video could be considered as art, as it is very different to any commercially based video. It serves more to further the original and different meta-narrative of the band, and the use of animals could be considered as a challenge to the conventions of modern music videos. This is postmodern because it goes completely against the norm of a music video.

Media Language

The Kooks - 'She Moves In Her Own Way' (Unknown, 2006)

It would seem that there is a classic, ‘don’t care’ indie image being created in the video. This is started with the ‘home-video’ style of camera work that is often slightly out of focus, containing very jerky footage. The footage is often of seemingly random people who the band has met on their trip around Mexico – the location of this video. This is part of the meta-narrative of The Kooks, emphasised by their messy hair and the trashy vocals of lead singer Luke Pritchard. There are references to popular culture in the video, including the hotel and the inflatable swimming toy reinforcing the conventions of consumerism in modern culture of the developed world. This is slightly offset in the video, as it is set in Mexico which is a developing country and therefore has not yet reached the endless consumption that is prevalent in developed countries. This video is inherently postmodern, with the band generally disobeying rules and messing around, for instance sitting on the hotel balcony ledge and burying each other at the beach.

Hugh Harris having been buried

 A nostalgic feel is also present in the video, with the band seemingly wishing to be back in the wild west, illustrated by the binning of their normal shoes and the buying of brown cowboy boots which are worn for the rest of the video. Mocking of the keytar (piano/guitar) is also seen with lead guitarist Hugh Harris pretending to play the keytar on a computer keyboard, emphasising the parody of the video.

Representation

Two Door Cinema Club - 'What You Know' (Serrano, 2011)

Two Door Cinema Club are represented as intelligent, well dressed, respectable people. This adds to their meta narrative of an indie rock band, with a feel in the video that they are just having fun. Dyer's theory (Stars, 1998) states that the star image is incoherent because of two key paradoxes. At the same time the star must firstly be present and absent and secondly the star must be ordinary and extra-ordinary. In this video, the costumes that the band members have are very ordinary, consisting of suits and a turtle neck jumper that anyone could buy. This fulfills the requirement of a star to be ordinary. On the other hand, the band are shown to be extra-ordinary by their obvious ability as oustanding musicians. This gives the requirements of stardom to 'Two Door Cinema Club', thus making them desireable to the audience.

The ordinary costume of the band

The male band members are represented as more important than the female dancers, who hand them their instruments and are seemingly there just to dance and look nice. This is quite a recessive ideology, which challenges the idea of the hegemonic masculinity. Femininity does not appear to be an ideology that has been considered in the making of this video. The youth in general are shown to look good, and always be having a good time, not really taking anything seriously. I think that the dominant values and beliefs in our society are being challenged slightly in the way that the women in the video are clearly subserviant, with them handing the band members their instruments and being given nothing more to do than dance around.