Class Presentation On Music Video

To enable us to understand the detail that is needed when producing a music video we were set the task in our groups in class to find a music video that covers Roland Barthes Code Theory. The music video that we found was ‘A Dustland Fairytale’ by The Killers, one of their less renowned songs distributed. We chose this music video as it covers the five aspects of Barthes Code Theory, these being: Enigma, Action, Semic, Symbolic and Cultural.

It covers the code Enigma (setting up a puzzle) as the narrative leaves you in suspense as you do not know what is going to happen, what it is leasing up to and why the vent actually happened.

Action (one thing after another) can be identified through the repetition of the fight in various frames throughout the video. Irresponsible settings and events appear regularly in the footage.

Semic refers to the connotations, the narrative suggest that the characters although young are illegally doing things. This is the male characters trying to impress the girls, something that still goes on today however in a trivial manner.

The Symbolic Code is looking at the binary opposition however, this is unidentifiable when looking at which character is the protagonist in the repetition of flashbacks in the text. The connotations that can be perceived from the main character being released from prison suggest that he is the antagonist due to him stabbing someone, although in defence.

Cultural references are also a key aspect to music videos and refer to the audience’s knowledge and the ideologies. In the case of The Killers video there is cultural references to the very old films of ‘Rebel Without Cause’ distributed in 1955 and ‘The Wild One’ distributed in 1953. Both these films were very popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s. However, when first watching the music video it can be noticed that it has similar connotations and references to the popular musical ‘Grease.’ Researching this information the film ‘Grease’ was in fact developed through basing it on ‘Rebel Without Cause’ and ‘The Wild One.’