The Kooks- Naive (2006)
The first shot in this music video contains the singer of the song, walking down a darkly lit alleyway. The character is wearing typically conventional indie clothing, with the black leather jacket, often associated with a trouble maker relating back to the biker jackets stereotype. The character also has long hair, often associated with the in die image, due to its lack of convention and the appearance that the person does not care about the way they appear. The female character that appears on screen throughout the video is stereotypically a good looking young girl, she is blonde and wearing very little clothing. This appeals to the male fans of the band as they would be attracted to her. However she is contradicting the perfect blonde image, as she looks messy and dirty and throughout the story of the video is the betraying girl who sleeps with another guy in the toilets of the gig.The editing throughout this video uses the idea of flashbacks returning to a night the guy had spent with the blonde girl, this enables us to grasp the idea of the story quickly making the song more understandable and relevant to the action on screen. The editing follows the pace of the music, so when the music breaks down the tracking shot becomes much slower and steadier. However when we see the girl cheating on the guy, and the guys reaction the editing is fast between each character to represent the quick and emotional feelings that both of the characters are feeling. The camera shots used throughout the video suggest that the guy is the main focus of the video. Through the use of a tracking shot we are shown the males perspective following marxists approach to media. We are given his story and when we see the male being betrayed we are made to give him empathy, not the young woman. The genre is portrayed through the iconography such as the stage lighting, the guitars and the use of alcohol. All of these things often appear in videos of this genre and portray an image of rebellious young people at parties, enjoying music and very often too much alcohol. This represents the youth as uncontrollable and untrustworthy, confiding to stereotypes. The video seems to communicate to the audience the negative side to relationships and the 'gig' scene. We see the young blonde being sick in the toilet, showing too much alcohol results in negative consequences. As well as this we see the young man being betrayed and hurt by a girl he has been looking for all night, suggesting that relationships result in hurt and pain, in this case for the male. The target audience is pretty clear within this video, we see the setting of a gig in which the people in the gig are fairly young, most of them look as through they are just over 18 and could represent the students, particularly as students often attend parties/gigs. The overall video has a fairly dingy tone throughout, the use of dark lighting immediately makes the audience feel on edge, and unsure of what it is to come. It also suggests that the atmosphere at places, such as the club this video is set, are places that have a dingy and dark tone. With the references to the dark places such as the alleyways and the dirty toilets we are portrayed the image of a generally nasty place in which these people are hanging out. This can be perceived to be representing the youth as people that hang around in dark/dingy places such as this club. This specific music video seems to follow todorov's narrative theory fairly well, we are first given the equilibrium of the male character looking around the club expecting to find the blonde girl that we have seen him with when we look at the flashbacks. Following this we see the disruption as the male character cannot find the female he is looking for, we see the realization of the disruption, and the attempt to fix it as the young male searches the club. However contradicting the narrative theory, the end of the video is not a resolution to the problem and the equilibrium is not really restored. This gives the video a unique twist as we are expecting the video to end happily, this is especially contradicting due to the upbeat style of the song that seems to portray a happy atmosphere. Throughout the video, a negative perception on women is notable, the specific use of a woman, that looks a mess, and is clearly drunk is a way of making women look the weaker gender, and portraying women to look as though they cannot control themselves very well. The bias attitude portrayed through the idea that we are following a patriarchal driven media, this tells the audience that the band are predominately male and that they may have the opinions demonstrated throughout the entire video. The video contains an obvious enigma, as the audience are intrigued to see if the male character ends up finding the girl he is looking for, this enigma is reinforced by the way we are seeing a tracking shot of the male of his situation, through this camera shot we are made to empathize with the male character.
Representation
Binary opposites are reinforced ---
Woman is considered immoral, cheating, getting very drunk etc.
Youth are represented as trouble provoking - fights, moody looks, alcohol
‘Women are bad’ considered untrustworthy
Genre
Indie band members/artists and fans considered rebellious party goers - setting reinforces this
Indie associated with heartbreak, alcohol, dancing, cheating
Presents the band member as moody, yet contradicts stereotypes as he seems weak after being betrayed, yet reinforces this again when starting a fight with somebody random in the club.
Audience
The audience see the woman acting this way, using the theories we have researched for example the hypodermic syringe theory we can see these ideas being injected into a passive audience that take this representation as fact.
Narrative
The narrative theory is not strictly followed in this video, however a narrative is portrayed through the use of a disruption and an attempt to restore the equilibrium. This story is made more clear due to the use of flashbacks showing a previous occasion.
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