Stephany Weise
English 111
Noah Tysick
October 19th, 2015    
Everyone has heard a song that’s hit them in a deeper place, caused them to express some extreme of an emotion, or simply an outburst of energy. The artists and publishers of the videos that coincide with these songs strive to bring about these emotions, to elicit excitement from the viewers, in some level or another. They use lighting, various added sounds, like traffic, or the sound of a crowd. Visuals that coincide with the music, as in a door banging at the same moment the drum set hits the bass really hard. These effects leave lasting impressions on the minds of the viewers, and generally leave them playing the song over and over in their heads, sometimes at two in the morning when they’re supposed to be sleeping. Two videos will be analyzed in this essay, Imagine Dragon’s “Demons”, and My Chemical Romance’s “Teenagers”. Two very different songs, with very different visual approaches to their videos.
Imagine Dragons is an alternative rock band, based in the US, who’s fame skyrocketed with the release of the album, “Radioactive”. The title song spent a grand deal of time at the top of the charts, and eventually was joined by another song in the same album, “Demons.” This music video isn’t very exciting, to be blatantly honest. There aren’t any pyrotechnics, no strange places or violence. It begins with a dark room, then the sound of a cheering crowd. A concert. Blue lights flash on to dimly illuminate the lead singer, as well as the audience, most of which have a hand in the air, some open, others holding only a few fingers up. The crowd goes silent, and the man begins to sing, slowly, intensely, with very clear enunciation on every few words. Aside from two or three accompanying instruments, it is quiet, the hands are waving slowly back and forth, as if everything is in slow motion, aside from the words. As the singing builds in intensity, the words growing stronger, faster, a bit louder, a woman in the crowd comes to focus, she seems to be calm, but distant, like she’s somewhere else. The camera zooms in on her eyes, and the scene changes. She is sitting alone, at a funeral. For one of her parents, I believe. The words that accompany this scene change, “ I wanna hide the truth, I wanna shelter you, But with the beast inside, There’s nowhere we can hide, No matter what we breed, We still are made of greed, This is my kingdom come, This is my kingdom come.” As this stanza ends, the crowd suddenly erupts into cheers and yelling, arms waving, jumping up and down, the light flash to red, illuminating everyone as the chorus is sung for the first time through. The lights go blue, everything slows down again as the second stanza begins, the camera focusing on a man, tall, thin, with long dark hair. He is smiling, but it fades as the scene changes, going into a bedroom, He’s shirtless, peering into a mirror. Obviously self conscious and unhappy with his appearance. There are weights on the floor. The words accompanying this scene change, “At the curtain’s call, It's the last of all, When the lights fade out, All the sinners crawl, So they dug your grave, And the masquerade, Will come calling out, At the mess you made.” The scene returns to the blue concert, everything still in slow motion aside from the music, and the camera crosses another young man, a hood pulled up to cover his blackened eye. It returns to him, zooming in on his eyes, and the scene goes to that of a livingroom. The boy is playing video games, and a man walks in, hitting him in the back of the head with his fist, a beer bottle clutched in it. He moves out of the shot, and then the bottle smashes on the wall behind the boy, at the same time the drummer hits his cymbals, the sound bringing the scene back to the concert, which is lit up red again as the chorus starts, the crowd once again moving more quickly, dancing, highly energetic. As it ends, the lights fade back to blue and the camera finds an older, colored man, and the camera zooms into a scene overseas. He is dressed in military clothing, sweating, clearly exhausted, with a fallen comrade over his shoulders. The lyrics at this point are “They say it's what you make, I say it's up to fate, It's woven in my soul, I need to let you go, Your eyes, they shine so bright, I wanna save that light, I can't escape this now, Unless you show me how.” The scene returns to the cheering and screaming crowd as the last chorus is played through. As the music finishes, the scene goes blue again, everything slowing down, and the camera zooms in on the eyes of the lead singer, blacking out the video and effectively ending it.
This video appeals to Aristotle’s appeal of Pathos. Everyone has their demons. It doesn’t matter who a person is, they have things that they struggle with. The loss of a loved one, body image, abuse, traumatic military experiences. This video makes use of subdued lighting and minimal graphics to emphasise the words, the blue gave a depressing atmosphere, the slowed movements of the crowd put the focus on what was being said, and it made the movement to the other scenes more dramatic. The red light and faster movements of the crowd created excitement, making the transitions to the next stanza even more dramatic and, honestly, depressing. This video is also dedicated to a boy named Tyler, who had one of the biggest demons of all, cancer. His courage inspired the band’s writing of this song, and even though he lost his battle with his demon, continues to support and inspire people with his story, and now this song.
The second video I chose was written and performed by the band My Chemical Romance. A very popular punk rock band, My Chemical Romance, MCR for short, makes a wide variety of very unusual pieces of music, and Teenagers is one of the strangest of them all. It is set in a high school auditorium, in the fashion of a pep assembly, perhaps. The stage is red, with cheerleaders along the back wall, talking and looking bored. The singer behinds, with a guitar accompaniment, as if he’s just doing a sound check. The cheerleaders begin to dance, as the doors to the side are banged on, though they are chained shut. As the song progresses, the cheerleaders dance rather provocatively, hips moving to the very obvious beat, as the doors are opened repetitively against the chains, following the same beat. As the music speeds up, the chorus beginning, the teenagers break in, all running into the gym at once. As the chorus comes to an end, the cheerleaders don gas masks, and the teenagers are all sitting in the rows of chairs in the gym, blank faced stares on the band as they continue through the next stanza. The cheerleaders continue their provocative dance through the stanza, dancing around the band members. As the chorus begins again the red drapes across the back of the stage drop, revealing the image of an atomic bomb explosion repeated three times. The teenagers all stand, and repeat a sort of fist bumping motion in unison as the cheerleaders pick up nightsticks and continue their weird dancing, pretending to shoot the singer as the song goes into a guitar solo. The crowd of teens pretty much becomes a mob from there, as the chorus is repeated several more times, they swarm the stage, stealing the instruments and trampling the band, confetti falling from the ceiling. It ends with the camera focused on the lead singer, on the floor, screaming, a look of pure panic on his face.
This song was difficult to determine the meaning behind, to analyze which of Aristotle’s appeals where used. It is also Pathos, in my opinion. The band wants to show how the world is stereotyping teenagers. Teenagers encourages kids to speak up, instead of act out, as the video portrays, they even post a message at the end of the song. “Violence is Never the Answer. If you feel like acting out, Reach Out.” The band illustrates the stereotype given to teenagers and young adults, and challenges us to change it.
In conclusion, both of these songs use the appeal of Pathos to convey emotions. They each use the same type of setting, a stage, in very different manners, but they both get their points across with these methods, the type of lighting, the visual effects. One of them shows that everyone has their demons, something they’re battling, and the other proves that stereotypes, and violence, need to be ended. These videos will leave a lasting impression on anyone who views them, and will prove these points without ever giving a speech, blowing something up, or writing a long and boring essay.