Below is a link to a YouTube video of Africa Shox.
The opening shot is a low angle pan of a skyscraper. This shot is designed to make the building look dark, daunting and intimidating.
This shot is followed by a police car with its headlights flashing one after the other and lights flashing on the top. This shot is to show the authority that the law has over society but could also show connotations to the rave/trance scene.
Between 0:11 and 0:24 there is a series of fast paced transitions. However whilst the shots are changing it constantly looks run down as if the concrete jungle itself is decaying. Notice also how there are only shots of the publics' feet and legs, all in black but nobodies faces. This means that the scene is sucked of colour and gives off an incredibly monotone vibe. The people in the video have a lack of identity. The video also relates to the rhythm of the music, for example: at 0:33 there is a snare drum synthesiser and as this plays the light on the left of the picture seen below flashes.
When the protagonist of the video is revealed to the audience he is seen, in a low angle shot, crawling up a dirty wall. This frames him as animalistic and savage which contrasts to the order and uncomfortably clinical, cleanliness of the city. The use of unsteady/handheld shots gives the illusion of disorientation together with his cloudy eyes. This allows the audience to make their own presumptions about this protagonist and why he is in this state. Drug abuse? Homelessness? Ravishing hunger?
From 0:57 - 1:41 there is a montage of fast cuts and un-steady shots creating a hectic atmosphere. Although there are standard bright city lights edited into this montage and this is to disorientate the audience even further.
At 1:42 the protagonist reaches out with a facial expression of desperation to a stranger who simply turns a blind eye and goes back to reading his newspaper. This may be designed to make the audience emotive towards the main character and feel such feelings as: pity or empathy. A man whose face is not really in shot (again giving no hint of individual identity) walks past as if our protagonist is not even there, knocking his arm off, it falling to the ground and then smashing like pottery.
At 1:51 a group of pigeons fly away due to the shattering of his arm. It could be argued that these represent fear and shock of the general public who simply are not showing it externally.
As the video continues, he deteriorates more and more. This could represent society and humanity itself: the audience sees the general public in this video as solitude and isolated even though they are in large groups like herds of animals. It is like humanity itself is falling to pieces just like the protagonist. The art of conversation has been lost between humans due to modern technology combined with such revelations as social networking sites.
At 3:12 the audience can see three young men 'street dancing/ break dancing'. The location they're in is key: an unpleasant looking car park. It is like many locations commonly featured in thriller films: dark, unpleasant, intimidating etc. An example of similarity (in location terms) to a thriller film is in Quentin Tarantino's 'Jackie Brown'. (Top picture is from the music video of Africa Shox - Leftfield. Bottom picture is from Quentin Tarantino's 'Jackie Brown'.)
The three street dancers are really the first people whose faces are in the shot for an extended period of time. This helps to give them identity unlike any of the other characters the audience has seen so far. The audience are able to make they're own presumptions about these men. Also notice that this is the first time that our crumbling protagonist seems calm and curious towards these men.
It could be argued that the reason the director included a section where there was dancing is to give the video a performance element instead of a single storyline all the way through. Another reason it could be thought why the director and editor included this is because they do a dance move called the 'robot'. The 'robot' is when a dancer moves in a sudden, jerky manner to make him/herself look mechanical and rigid. Our protagonist does not seem quite human so he may be able to relate to these people thus the reason he has such an indifferent expression at 3:19 (seen below).
Our protagonists hopes are not kept for long however after one of the dancers shatters his right leg.
To make matters worse he looses his footing and falls thus smashing his other arm (seen below).
So our protagonist is now left with no arms and his left leg. At this point the audience is exposed to another character who is incredibly important due to his costume and his dialogue. He is seen in the picture below.
He is dressed in such a way that he looks like a traditional 'witchdoctor' native to such countries as Africa. This relates with our protagonist to show that he's not alone in this frightening, modern world. Although this 'witchdoctor' has a twist to his costume which are the sunglasses. These show that he is integrated into the modern system of society.
Also do notice that its a low angle shot that he is being filmed with. This is used to show his power and authority whereas our protagonist is shot in a high angle shot showing his weakness and disability in this case due to the fact that he's only got one functioning limb.
The dialogue that the witchdoctor has is the five words of:
"Do you need a hand?"
This is obviously the use of play on words because our protagonist has no hands left. The audience assumes however that the witchdoctor helps him up because the following shot is our protagonist hopping out into the middle of the street where he is hit by a taxi and finally destroyed totally.
Throughout the entire video it could be argued that the protagonist represents the slaves and the slave trade when they first arrived in Virginia, America in 1619. The reason for this thought is because no-one wants to help him and have no respect just like the slaves. Also (with exclusions of the witchdoctor) he is the only black person within the video that the audience is revealed to.
This video definitely takes place in America although in which city it is hard to guess but there are a few cultural signifiers leaning the opinion towards New York, USA. One of these is the bright yellow taxi cab which are famous for New York being their home.
Your inter textual reference to Jackie Brown is interesting and links Tarantino's ambivalent/dystopic representations of urban USA cities to this dystopic representation of New York.
ReplyDeleteJames you were given 2 documents advising how to structure this analysis, I'd suggest that from now on all your analysis of music videos is strongly linked to Goodwin's theory otherwise you are in danger of a descriptive account (with some analysis) of the action, thus indicating basic conceptual understanding.