Analysis 2

This is the music video for the band 'Muse's song 'Muscle Museum' from their 'Showbiz' album. The video begins with an old fashioned film countdown. This pragmatically gives the idea what is about to start is an old story which will be replayed continually becoming a classic. It then moves on to shots of a suburban estate. This implies a casual everyday feeling to the video.
The bass line of the music is played throughout the suburban shots implying it is the background, and the one continuum in the story. The bigger riff then begins to play as the man comes into shot. This suggests to the viewer that the main body of the story revolves around the people in the estate rather than the estate itself.
The plain houses and rhythmical bass line give a sense of monotony to the life of the people there and the lifestyle they lead. The whole opening sequence has a generally mundane feel, for example, one man polishing his car or another eating breakfast. This lets the video connect with the audience allowing them to think they know how these situations feel. This changes once the lyrics start. It then feels like this mundane suburban estate is less ordinary than it first seems.
The opening line of the song is “she had something to confess to” which, with the use of the past tense, gives the impression this event has already happened and the song is remembering the occurrence. The video then changes between images of the band and images of people on the estate suggesting a kind of distance between them; the band being the ‘storytellers’ and the people ‘characters’ in their story.
Between the lines “but you don’t have the time so” and “look the other way” the video shows a woman in her kitchen carrying out everyday tasks. This pragmatically suggests there are too many other things for this person to be doing, such as cooking, meaning that she doesn’t have time to be dealing with a difficult topic such as confessing. This meaning is reinforced by the lyrics and the phrase “look the other way” encouraging the idea of ignoring the situation and carrying on with routine tasks. Later in the video we see the same woman in tears still cooking. Pragmatically this suggests this act is simply a distraction from her feelings.
The video uses the image of a man stood in front of the mirror in his underwear brushing his teeth to correspond with the line “to reveal what you’d never shown her” this takes the word “reveal” to a literal sense. The absence of clothes implies potential weakness yet honesty; it suggests you can’t hide anything when you are stripped down. Here the connotations of the song suggest this man has lost something which means a lot to him leaving him vulnerable; using the clothes as an analogy. We can see this by the use of lexis such as “missed it” and “escaped” which imply he has lost something by letting it simply slip through his fingers. In this scene the man is carrying out the simple task of brushing his teeth, this makes the image much more tangible for the viewer allowing them to connect with the character making them, almost, feel his emotions which are being built from the lyrics.
The image of a girl laid on her bed looking distorted fits with the word “late” this correspondence suggests that if it hadn’t been “too late” the girl would be in a much less ‘distorted’ state and could have been kept from this pain. This image comes almost straight after the man in front of the mirror. It causes the viewer to make a link between the two peoples situations suggesting he caused this for the girl.
The image of the man brushing his teeth is held in shot for 6 seconds whilst a repetitive riff, such as the monotony of his movements, plays in the background. During this short time the intensity of the backing riff grows signifying the build up of emotion in the man until the height of intensity where he lets his emotion out through crying. At this point the lyrics start again and the video cuts to a shot of the band. This peak of emotion reaches out to the audience demonstrating the pain he is feeling. Although, this pragmatically suggests the man wants to hide the fact he is “begging” as it is seen as weakness. He seems to achieve this by ‘hiding’ behind the music and using it to conceal the fact he is failing to cope with these intense emotions.
The general idea of the video seems to be how, although, things appear to be fine on the surface once you start to look closer there are cracks in this façade. One example of this is 11 seconds, and again at 18 seconds, into the video there is a boy laid on the pavement. This, at first glance, appears to be a fairly peaceful stance which is reinforced at 18 seconds as he stretches his feet out suggesting idyllic emotions. However, one minute later at 1.18 the viewer sees the face of the boy who is actually crying. Had you seen this before it would have ruined the mundane feel at the beginning of the video destroying the illusion that it creates for the viewer.
Throughout the video a wide variety of people are used to represent the story. Varying from a boy laid on the pavement to a fire-fighter on his lorry. Each person is shown to be crying or dealing with intense distress. The lyrics of the song appear to be, almost, taunting the people about this ‘mistake’ that has been made. We can see this through the use of intensifiers such as “big” and ”so” before the noun to emphasise what is being said.
As the video goes on the more distressed each person appears to be and the more the original impression we got of this simple suburban estate changes. This leads the viewer to believe there is more than meets the eye to these mundane activities which now appear to be difficult to carry out.
The last line of the song is “I’ll do it on my own”. This is repeated twice reinforcing the meaning behind it. This line pragmatically suggests how each individual featured in the video has no one who can help them through these problems. This idea is supported when, at 3.37, an image of a family is shown. This suggests an idyllic, structured, loving lifestyle which appears impossible for these people to achieve. This family scenario appears to be out of reach to each character even the child at his birthday party, at 3.08, is crying suggesting lack of support and comfort.
The way the video has been put together is very effective as well as how it corresponds to the meaning behind the words. It uses strong images and words, such as “adore”, “needing” and “begging” to concentrate the meaning sending out a very powerful message to the viewer allowing it to influence their feelings in a way which leaves them thinking about the meaning even after the end of the video.
Overall, the video is very powerful using emotion and images to connect with the viewer. The use of pragmatics within the lyrics become apparent the more you listen; allowing the listener to almost and feel the pain of each person featured. The way the video starts out is almost like a representation of real life how everything appears fine but when you look deeper there is far more than meets the eye. This opposes the original feel you get of the situation from the opening shots.