Research Blog: Music Video Conventions

Airplanes by M.I.A. is a typical electronic dance song from the late 2000. The songs in this genre typically involve a variety of scenes including dancing, lipsynching, and other fast passed action shots. The existing music video for this song starts with short scenes of a major city. These are all clips of infrastructure and random walking individuals. Then the singer comes begins singing the song and dancing in various locations. Her lipsynching is broken up by various candid scenes featuring the singer. One example includes her working in a fast-food truck and serving a customer. The entire music video continues in much the same fashion. Clips on lipsyncing, shopping, dancing, city shots, and working at the food truck continue to appear to continue throughout the video. This video is was published in 2009 and uses outdated filming styles, fashion styles, dancing styles, and even content styles. It is very different then modern music videos which use high definition cameras and modern styles. I understand that for the time the video was very relevant to the style, and modern music videos will one day also be outdated, but due to the advancement of technology and the massive cultural revolution over the past decade a lot has changed. This song and the music video purposely plays to stereotypes of violence and crime as a result of immigration, especially from those who are here without citizenship. M.I.A chose to do this because of her personal experiences with the U.S. immigration policy. She was going through the visa process and faced a lot of political and burocratic walls that delayed her months. She attributed this delay to her dark skin and traditional Sri Lanken name Mathangi Arulpragasam. The gunshot sounds and cash register noises in the song suggest a robbery, but M.I.A. claims they have a deeper meaning in bringing awareness to the sale of guns to Third-World countries and reaping the profits at the expense of human lives. The dark image created by the lyrics and music video has resulted in censorship issues by M.I.A. states that the intent of the song was to make people realize what harmful and negative stereotypes exist about immigrants and challenging those conceptions. This song uses elements from many cultures including Jamaican dance hall rapping, Trinidadian soca rhythm, and an Indian bhangra drumbeat. These clips were reassembled and recast to further include the message of immigration and humanity into the song. [11/16/20]

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