Blog #3 - Looking at Icons in Our Society
Assignment...
Choose two posts from any social media site that you feel represent icons in our current society. Write about each post identifying at least three symbols and what they might mean.
I don't know if I did this right, but YouTube videos are technically posts...I think.
Post #1: The Ghost of You - My Chemical Romance (Music video)
LINK
My Chemical Romance has been one of my favorite bands for eons now. Their music is special to me not just because I love their sound, but also because of their themes and extensive lyrics that weave together a universe album by album. They touch on a range of themes such as the identity of oneself, rebellion, being an outcast or a misfit, doomed love in many different forms, legacies in both life and death, the chain of events within death, grief, the and afterlife, the idea and concept of death itself, and horror imagery and tropes. The album I’m selecting this music video from is Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. This album was MCR’s second studio album, released in the summer of 2004. Gerard Way, MCR’s frontman, described this album as a “pseudo-conceptual horror story.” The album follows the continued story of the protagonist from MCR’s album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, who was involved in a forbidden love, and because of this love was gunned down in a fight. He arrives in Hell, where he makes a deal with the Devil to restore his life and reunite him with his lover, at the price of bringing the Devil a thousand souls from evil men. If he fails, he is to be damned to hell and never see his love again. Every song in the album is tied to this baseline plot and follows his journey of retrieving the thousand souls.
The specific song in this video (The Ghost of You) is the 6th track on this album and continues the story from the lover’s perspective, focusing on her grief and wondering if she’ll ever see her love again. Themes centering the loss of a loved one are touched in this song besides the overarching story telling going on. The funny thing about this song is how unrelated the music video is to the storyline of this album. It’s set in World War II on D-day. The music video flickers in and out of scenes of the members of the band performing at a United Service Organizations dance and scenes of the warfare of the battle. It ends with Mikey Way, Gerard’s younger brother, getting shot and killed in action as Mikey watches. Gerard said that the music video’s symbolism and story was to explore “war and loss and love and everything,” but their biographer, Tom Bryant, said that the band’s tour was also an underlying meaning of the video, as their theme cycle was like “going to war.”
The symbols in this music video are endless, but I’ll touch on my favorites. Right off the bat, at 0:35, lined up with the lyrics and chorus of “I can’t always just forget her … But she could try … At the end of the world … Or the last thing I see … You are never coming home, never coming home … Could I? Should I? … And all the things that you never ever told me … And all the smiles that are ever, ever…” The room is seen dancing in coupled pairs as Gerard and the rest of the band sings on stage, and then focuses on a woman (who will appear later) dancing with a soldier before flashing to a scene of soldiers on boats, sailing to their deathbed. Before the chorus passes, the boats dock and the soldiers run out as the music mellows back into verse. To me, this sequence has so much symbolism inside of it tied to the suspense that the soldiers are putting on the shoulders of their lovers, but also the glimmer of hope that returning home to that love that drives them to keep fighting until victory, as well as the paralyzing and soul crushing fear they face going into D-day knowing that they’re very likely going to die. Later in the video, at 1:21, timed with the lyrics of ”At the top of my lungs in my arms, she dies … She dies” before dipping back into the chorus, the same woman who appeared prior is shown dancing again, but this time instead of a soft smile, her face wears almost a worried grimace, signifying that she knows that this may be the last time they see each other. My final and favorite point of symbolism is at timestamp 2:03, at the lyrics “If I fall … If I fall, down” before Gerard descends into a screaming, sorrowful melody. It shows the woman from before a third time as well as Mikey, looking back at each other between shots as Mikey and the rest of the band walk away. Right before Gerard’s screaming begins, Mikey turns away and the scene cuts to clips of Mikey’s death on the battlefield. To me, this symbolizes possibly their actual goodbye, but also a mental one, as Mikey walking into the background almost signifies an emotional detach that had to have been severed in order to not break a heart.
Post #2: Somewhere I Belong - Linkin Park (Music video)
LINK
I want to write more about this song and this band, because I feel like Linkin Park fosters so much symbolism and both literal and subliminal messages in their songs, but alas I’m losing some steam so I will be keeping these paragraphs a little more brief…
This song’s lyrics touch on feeling empty, confused and lost following the search for belonging and feeling understood, as well as other emotions that plague us along these lines such as anger, isolation, emotional pain, and other inner turmoils. The words describe this search for belonging as a path to heal from the past of pain and anguish, and how it leads to connecting with something real. These lyrics offer a safe space for listeners and a sense of having someone else with similar experiences to them. Linkin Park’s music is central in this feeling of belonging by just listening, and that’s one of the big reasons I love their music.
The lyrics in this are less symbolic and much more literal than my previous song in this blog, but the music video does have some good symbols in it. Throughout the video, the visuals of fire as well as falling rain are prevalent. I feel as if these symbols are representations of the emotions previously mentioned: the anger, sense of being out of place, sadness and sorrow, pain and internal battles. Later in the video at various points, short shots of a bed engulfed in flames is present, as well as shots of mecha action figures and a taxidermied crocodile head surrounded in flames. I’m not sure what the crocodile head ties to, but I interpret the burning bed as a suggestion towards leaving your bad habits and baggage behind, waking up from the exhausted haze you’re in and turning a new day into something worthwhile. I think the mecha figures could be a tie to a similar “cutting off past problems” idea, but maybe more symbolic of childhood trauma, and the past bridges being burned due to letting go of said trauma.