How useful are ideas about narrative in analysing music videos? Refer to the Close Study Products ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Letter to the Free’ in your answer

If we are referring to the narrative theory then there are many theorists that we can apply, for example is Todorov’s Tripartite which explores a range of ideas such as how all the narratives should follow a structure equilibrium , disruption and ends with a new equilibrium.

Both CSP’s (“Letter to the Free and “Ghost Town”) clearly follow Todorov’s Triparite, because for example this is clearly shown in Ghost Town of how the person is driving through the streets of London and how it has become a “ghost town”. Then the disequilibrium begins when the car that is being driven through the town just begins swerving out of control as if it something had suddenly impacted it. But then we can see that the new disequilibrium is found when everything goes back to normal when the band is seen at the beach peacefully playing around with rocks, which could symbolise that everything is going back to normal, because the last scene that was present was a scene where everything span out of control and then now the disequilibrium is now peacefully chilling out at a beach skimming rocks.

Anyhow now relating to “Common’s Letter to the Free” they also follow Todorov’s Tripartite narrative theory. The video begins with a rolling camera going through jail cells and then you finally get to a black box kind of shape, which could represent that black lives are infinite and are equal to every other colour or race on this planet where the message “black lives matter” could come in depending on how people interpret the music video. The disruption in the music video is when Common is seen in a prison playing music which some people can say this is a way of showing ‘freedom’. But finally the new equilibrium of the music video is the empty shots of the prison and zooming out shot of a house most likely ‘Common’s’ house, with the outdoor shot symbolising freedom and as we can clearly see from the music video he has managed to gain freedom if he is clearly at home and not in the beginning equilibrium which is in jail. But then once again towards the end you see the black box appears again to remind us of the purpose of the song which is that black lives are infinite and matter like all the races on the planet.

In conclusion Todorov’s Narrative Theory is very good to follow because not only does it follow a narrative theory to make the music video and song easier to follow, but also applying a narrative theory also helps you understand the message that is being put across in each of the music videos which have been presented to us. Like in “Ghost Town” we could clearly see that the music video and the message it was trying to deliver is all about the economy crisis that happened to London during the 80’s but one example of this was when the car lost control which insinuates that everything was going well until one day where the economy had just collapsed and lost control, also when you also relate to somewhere like London you don’t really consider it a ghost town so the theory being used here is the Levi-Strauss theory of binary opposites which clearly states that London is a place where many people live and is not a ‘ghost town’ at all. Anyways using a music video can be a visual way to really help you get your message across to people and get them to understand the little hints which is why applying a narrative to music videos is important.