The Evaluation of the music 'Stan' Eminem.
The music video follows a close narrative structure. It is all based around the star image, which is Eminem.
The hero/villain image is not so clear in the sequence as we follow a variety of ideas to identify who we feel is a obvious villain or an obvious hero.
There are 3 different conflicts being shown in this sequence:
1. the conflict of the boyfriend character with himself,
2. the conflict of the boyfriend trying to write to Eminem, and
3. the conflict between the boyfriend and the girlfriend.
The music video portrays a very disturbed character who has a clear obsession with Eminem. We see him dye his hair; become aggressive when listening to his music , destroy things and hurt others etc. The narrative is about the character who idolises Eminem. We see a clear structured beginning, middle and end.
At the beginning we see the girlfriend who is played by Dido who is tossing and turning (she is also pregnant). We then see the boyfriend dying his hair blond which is creating the idea that he is copying the 'Eminem's look'. Throughout the narrative we see the frustration of the boyfriend writing to Eminem about his life, relating it to Eminem's like the fact he has a father/son bad relationship as well. He gets angry with the girlfriend repeatedly and treats her awfully by abusing her. There is a clear dramatic irony in that we, the audience, see that the letters the boyfriend is trying to get through to Eminem don't arrive to him because they either don't get sent out properly or Eminem himself is just too busy to read the letters. This results the boyfriend crashing the car with the pregnant girlfriend in the back and killing her.
The conflict is never resolved because it results in the boyfriend never getting an answer so he kills the girlfriend, and the letter Eminem finally writes to the boyfriend is written to late. We follow the boyfriend mainly throughout the sequence as the lyrics suggest what he is feeling. We are led to relate to this character because we see that he is extremely troubled, but there is slight sympathy for him. We see iconography being used in this by seeing the posters of Eminem all over the fan's basement walls. This actually shows that Eminem's production company/management and Eminem himself do not think highly of fan 'obsessing' over him as it can have disastrous consequences, like is shown in this video when the obsessed fan kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend by driving off a bridge when Eminem does not reply soon enough to his message.
There are 3 different conflicts being shown in this sequence:
1. the conflict of the boyfriend character with himself,
2. the conflict of the boyfriend trying to write to Eminem, and
3. the conflict between the boyfriend and the girlfriend.
The music video portrays a very disturbed character who has a clear obsession with Eminem. We see him dye his hair; become aggressive when listening to his music , destroy things and hurt others etc. The narrative is about the character who idolises Eminem. We see a clear structured beginning, middle and end.
At the beginning we see the girlfriend who is played by Dido who is tossing and turning (she is also pregnant). We then see the boyfriend dying his hair blond which is creating the idea that he is copying the 'Eminem's look'. Throughout the narrative we see the frustration of the boyfriend writing to Eminem about his life, relating it to Eminem's like the fact he has a father/son bad relationship as well. He gets angry with the girlfriend repeatedly and treats her awfully by abusing her. There is a clear dramatic irony in that we, the audience, see that the letters the boyfriend is trying to get through to Eminem don't arrive to him because they either don't get sent out properly or Eminem himself is just too busy to read the letters. This results the boyfriend crashing the car with the pregnant girlfriend in the back and killing her.
The conflict is never resolved because it results in the boyfriend never getting an answer so he kills the girlfriend, and the letter Eminem finally writes to the boyfriend is written to late. We follow the boyfriend mainly throughout the sequence as the lyrics suggest what he is feeling. We are led to relate to this character because we see that he is extremely troubled, but there is slight sympathy for him. We see iconography being used in this by seeing the posters of Eminem all over the fan's basement walls. This actually shows that Eminem's production company/management and Eminem himself do not think highly of fan 'obsessing' over him as it can have disastrous consequences, like is shown in this video when the obsessed fan kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend by driving off a bridge when Eminem does not reply soon enough to his message.
Iconography, sound, mise-en-scene and music are all so important throughout the video. Discussing imagery as iconography in this way implies a critical "reading" of imagery that often attempts to explore social and cultural values. Iconography is also used within film studies to describe the visual language of cinema, particularly within the field of genre criticism.
Iconography in this music video is used in resembling the obsession the character has for Eminem... we see him in his creepy den, which is covered in Eminem posters. The mise-en-scene helps set the mood in the video. It is very dark; this is reflected through the lighting, which in the house is dark, a sickly yellow colour, and lots of silhouettes of windows etc. They have also put in thunder and lightning and rain in the video. The music itself is key as the lyrics contrast the feelings of the characters; the sound creates an atmosphere and it also adds to the mood such as lightning- pathetic fallacy .
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