Had to watch this MV as part of the tutorial preparation for my Narrative module. Basically we had to analyse the story and how the story is being presented to the viewer. This was one out of the three videos we had to analyse (the other two being Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" and Coldplay's "The Scientist") and since I find it rather intriguing, I'm going to share more about it here!
When I played the video for the first time, I was like wtf is this shit LOL. I had to replay it a few more times before I could identify a few key points.
Maybe you'd want to try watching the video first (for those who have not already watched this before, like me hahaha) and try to make sense out of it. I shall write out what we discussed during the tutorial session below.
From the beginning, we pretty much know that this takes place at an Asian country (Japan most probably) from the tape used to cordon the area, then we see a man on the top of a car and the recurring theme of smoke brings us to the first verse of the song.
We see three different groups of people - the shag-face guy with a suitcase, the girl who writes 'I'm nothing' and a guy who has tomatoes thrown at him by a woman. At this point in time when I first watched the video, nothing made sense to me at all. I had no single idea what was going on hahaha.
Moving on to the second verse of the song, here is when we get greater insight (well, except the girl I guess, I really couldn't figure out that part) into what the whole video is about. This part is also shown in reverse chronological order. These are what we concluded from the tutorial discussions:
- The girl suffers from low self-esteem, leading her to self-harm. I suggested that she is obsessed with her appearance (because there is a mirror there) and my tutor said that that is a legit point also.
- The shag guy is a drug user, the briefcase contains the drugs and the green thingy is a needle I suppose.
- (This was the most obvious one imo) The guy who is thrown tomatoes at was caught by his pregnant wife on his infidelity.
- Overall, the video can be interpreted as having different plot lines (the three groups of characters who probably do not know each other exists) in one story world.
- I interpret the lead singer jumping off the building as possibly any person in society who is faced with the same situations as the three groups of characters we were earlier introduced to.
We also discussed about the beginning and endings and how MVs can both provide greater clarity and delimit the possible interpretations of a song, but nah I'm going to leave those out haha and just focus on the plot.
These may come across as obvious to some haha but at the end of the tutorial I was just wow-ed by how artistic this MV actually is, contrary to my initial belief.
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