TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MUSIC VIDEO

Here i took a music video from Youtube and look at its conventions and characteristics. MUSIC VIDEO: EMINEM “Without You” GENRE: HIP HOP/RAP The music video that I am analysing is a video for the song ‘Without You’ by Eminem. Eminem is a very popular rap artist that is known as one of the best. The genre of the song is mainly rap but also touches on hip hop themes as well. The video has characteristics such as money, girls, cars and jewellery that are all associated with rappers. The start of the video shows Eminem waking up as if he’s been away for a while and this links to the lyrics “guess who’s back”. It’s like he’s been away and him waking up shows him coming back. He wakes up next to two girls that are basically prostitutes showing the life of a rapper/hip hop artist. He goes on to say “tell a friend” and this is shown on the video by people telling people. In most of the video the cutting and editing of it matches the beats and speed of the song. The pace of the video is extremely random and is forever changing and increasing at different points. There are a lot of different scenes that don’t link to each other. For example it cuts from a TV show scene to a scene in a car like batman and robin. The scenes have no link whatsoever but are put together randomly a lot throughout the video. The record company is trying to sell this music video by making it funny and comical. For example it has a scene with an Elvis lookalike dancing that is meant to be funny. Most of the themes in this video are skits and remakes of other TV shows or rappers. For example, Eminem is portrayed as coming back as robin from batman and robin. The image of Eminem that has been projected is that he is a very controversial person and isn’t afraid to do certain things like make fun other international tv channels such a E. Also making fun of Elvis takes guts to do as Elvis is very iconic in the music industry. A lot of Eminem’s videos follow the theme of skits and parody’s so this video is nothing new in terms of videos from Eminem. Most of the ideas and themes have been used before, for example in another one of his music videos “just lose it” he mimics and makes fun of Michael Jackson, another huge person in the music industry that he isn’t afraid to make fun of. The only feeling of sexual advertisement is at the beginning when he wakes up with two women that look like they are dressed in a promiscuous. However I think the goal isn’t to portray him as a sex icon. The goal is to show him as controversial character that will say what people are thinking and scared to say. There is barely anything that promotes sex really. Just the two women he is in bed with at the start. This music video has lots and lots of intertextual references. For example it has the popular tv channel called EEntertainment. He uses it to portray Elvis as if it was the real story about him. Basically, it’s saying that the true story programmes in E are wrong and a joke. This music video has a good balance of performance and narrative themes. For example it has a certain scene of him just rapping to the camera but it also has a back story of him being robin saving a kid. However during the narrative scenes he is still rapping and singing the song. This looks very good on camera. It shows him very involved with the video and everything going on. A lot of the video is him dressed up. In conclusion, this video is solely made to be controversial and provoking. It’s trying to annoy certain people and give enjoyment to the public because of the funny way he is doing it through parodys.