Music Video Analysis

This video is by an Independent band The Mystery Jets signed to the Rough Trade label. The track is about a woman who's boyfriend is in love with another girl as well as herself. The video follows this narrative, but has taken a comic standing on the lyrics 'He's half in love with Elizabeth' and used Queen Elizabeth as the 'other woman'. Although through the filming this isn't overtly clear until the final minute, so it appears a fairly redundant narrative to the unsuspecting audience although filmed quite artistically, but once the twist has become apparent and the subtle hints before are finally realised it is clear that the video is actually entropic.

The video coheres to Andrew Goodwin's theory illustrating a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating and amplifying the lyrics. For example there are some very illustrative shots, the mid shot of the lead male protaganist leaping out of bed in a suit coincides on beat with the lyric 'How can you trust a man that sleeps in his clothes?' There is also a lot of genre related style present with art house edits and effects, such as the very short incorporations of stop motion and the very urbanised muted colours and setting, also the first few seconds illustrate an alternative video as the titles portray a film style video with a narrative and the use of subtitles within the video are not typically conventional of mainstream and the whole video being shot in black and white.

Overall I would class the video as amplifying, as even though the video is what the lyrics are talking about, the spin the director has put on the lyrics including the references to the Queen and not following the lyrics to the letter make it a non illustrative video.

The cultural studies approach would take the stance of:

The preffered reading- It is natural to have problems within a relationship and the proposed relationship between a 'common' man and her Royal Highness the Queen is not a problem.

The negotiated reading- Some people have problems within a relationship, and relationship between the man and his 'mistress' are used for comic effect in this specific example and should not be taken too seriously.

The oppositional reading- The relationship problems should not be a source of entertainment, and the relationship between a 'common' man and the Queen is highly inappropriate and offensive to the royal constitution.

The video does not really cohere to the Proppian theory although it could be viewed that the man is the male hero seeking something (the queen) and the Princess that acts as the heroes reward is the queen. This theory is difficult to apply to the video as the roles do not cohere with each character and it doesn't really help push the narrative forward by classifying these roles.

The Strauss theory of binary opposites can be applied; as the audience we feel more connected to the female character, as she is the one victim to the man's bad behaviour and she has done nothing wrong so is therefore seen as the good character. Although the male is the dominant character within the shots, we find ourselves feeling sympathy for the female.

Perhaps the most effective narrative theory to apply to the video is Todorov's:

Equilibrium: The first shots revealing the couple in a happy relationship
Disequilibrium: The shots illustrating the break up, as the audience begins to realise there might be 'another woman'
Recognition: The woman finds clear evidence of the man's affair and the audience realise who it is in the basketball shots
Reperation: The man goes after the woman and apologises
New Equilibrium: The woman accepts and thinks that all is solved, but the man is waving at the Queen and therefore we are really back to square one.