Saturday, June 29, 2013

Analysis Arctic Monkeys


The video was directed by Paul Fraser and premiered on MTV2 on 21 December 2005.
It starred Lauren Socha and Stephen Graham. The music video used footage from a film, Scummy Man, which used the same actors who appeared in the video to tell the story of 'Nina', the nameless "that girl there" from the song.
The lyrics and video tell a story in the point of view of a someone who was approached by a under dressed girl, implied to be a prostitute and he sees a "scummy man" who has been hanging around. The man is either the prostitute's pimp or a 'client' who is picking her up. This beginning of the song consists of just vocalist Alex Turner singing with a electric guitar chords with a oddly soft tone. After the line "I said he's a scumbag don't you know" the song then changes into a heavy rock style with a fast beat and guitar riff which is also played on the bass guitar. When this happens the shots change from slow paced cuts and pans to a julty hand held in a speeding car, this shows the change in tempo and shows the narrative picking up pace.
In the songs lyrics, the prostitute propositions the song's narrator and he turns her down politely; he then observes the "scummy man" arriving to pick her up in a Ford Mondeo, this shows relation to lyrics and visuals because she speaks to a younger looking boy and he rejects her. After that you see her being picked up by the 'Scumbag' whilst the boy sees. The girl is "delighted when she sees him" because "she must be fucking freezing, scantily clad beneath the clear night sky" also showing relation to visuals.
The song's chorus consists of the repeated line "they said it changes when the sun goes down around here", noting the stark difference between the appearance of the city at daytime in the video and the dark prostitution trade the narrator observes in the lyrics.
After the second chorus, the song goes back to the style of the introduction. The last line "I hope you're not involved at all," is either the narrator expressing his disappointment that the girl has turned to prostitution or a warning to the person to the narrator is telling the story to, who also may be involved with the 'scummy man' or the listener themselves.
The setting is in a city, most of the areas they use seem rather run down. This works because the main character is meant to be homeless and you wouldn't see her in a well built up area.
This will help me be more creative by looking at different genres and seeing different concepts and narratives.
This will help me because they have very good relation to lyrics and a subtle link in story line.

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