Friday 21 March 2014

Textual Analysis of Chop Suey




Genre


As this song is classed as ‘Freak Metal’ (along with most of System of a Down’s music), it mainly follows the conventions seen in metal and rock music. The most obvious of which would be the fact that it is showcasing the band playing at a concert in front of a large crowd on stage. They also have used the image of a stereotypical person that would listen to metal music: tattoos, piercings, odd hairstyles, angry, likes to fight. They have also used interesting CGI effects in post-production to phase different members of the band through each other in the chorus’. This helps to emphasize the fact that it is ‘Freak Metal’ by putting something extremely out of the ordinary in the video.


Narrative

The video does not have much of a narrative as such as there is not a particular storyline to follow; it is mainly showcasing the band playing at the concert. Although some parts of the video may have been used to emphasise some of the lyrics.

For example, on the line “Hide the scars to fade away the shake-up”, some of the band member briefly disappear multiple times, possibly linking to “Hide the scars……”.







On the line “I cry…….”, the singer can be seen eating food with others in the background, all with depressed looks on their face, as if they need to cry.

On the last line “When angels deserve to die”, it can be seen that the band is no longer there, having a lyrical link between the end of the concert and death.

Representation


As the video is mainly focused on men, with women only briefly appearing in the crowd scenes, this could be challenging the idea of equality between both genders. However, stereotypically in media texts, it is usually shown as men being the dominating sex, a convention which has been followed in the video.

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