RB: Music Video Analysis 1

Blink 182 – Stay Together For the Kids (Bayer, 2001) (Media Language and Representation)

• This video shows a clear social message about families being destroyed by divorce. The video reinforces the direct meaning of the song lyrics, making the band image completely different to that shown in many other of Blink 182’s videos, for example, their videos such as ‘First Date’ (Malloy, 2001) and ‘Rock Show’ (Malloy, 2001) are both made as jokes and ‘All The Small Things’ (Siega, 2000) parodies videos bands of different genres. As the video and lyrics to this song have an amplified relationship, it shows a more serious message than other Blink 182 videos.

• This message is reinforced throughout the video by mise-en-scene and other visual techniques. The video is shot in a derelict house, and throughout the video the house is shown from the outside being hit by a wrecking ball. This relates to the statement shown at the beginning of the video: '50 per cent of all American households are destroyed by divorce.’ The wrecking ball destroying the house can be viewed in the same way as parents destroying families by divorcing. As well as this, the video ends with the kids breaking the band’s instruments which prove a similar point about things being broken of destroyed.

• Dull colours and low lighting are used throughout the video which makes it seem sad and agrees with the message of the song. The lyrics of the song are written from the point of view of a band member who couldn’t understand why his parents were divorcing rather than working through their problems (rather than fix the problems/they never solve them). The lyrics also sound as though the lyricist is blaming his parents for destroying the household (‘it’s so pathetic/it makes no sense at all’). Throughout the video, a lot of dust is used around the house which could relate to these lyrics by obscuring the view of the children as to why their parents are divorcing rather than working it out.

• The band is given prevalence throughout the video and is shown performing the song in the house. The mise-en-scene presents them as being more serious than previous videos, for example in this video they are dressed more smartly in other videos where they are often wearing funny costumes. This is a change to the band’s meta-narrative, and was the last video released from an album of mainly ruder of more jokey songs before they began to release more serious music. 

• The other people in the video are watching the band which shows that they relate to the theme of the song and positions the band as important to the other characters in the video.
• Amongst these people, there is a variation of genders, ethnicities and types of people, as well as young children and teenagers. It seems that all these people’s families have been affected by divorce, meaning that although they all look and seem different, they all have this in common. 

• These children are shown skateboarding around the outside of the house, as well as some of them having tattoos and piercing which, along with their destroying of the house and band’s instruments, connotes rebellion as well as a dominant idea of teenage behaviour. This creates a contrast between the song and video, as the video makes it look as though the children are in the wrong, but the lyrics suggest that it in fact the children attempting to save their family, for example, one line of the song is ‘what stupid poem could fix this home/I’d read it every day.’
• In a similar way, this could be seen as an ideological discourse to the video. The dominant reading would be the children rebelling and destroying the house and instruments as this is obviously happening in the video. However, the statement at the beginning ‘50 per cent of all American households are destroyed by divorce,’ and end ‘50 per cent of all American households stay together’ suggest that this is the parents fault and the children are wanting to save the family. As the band are the only adults shown in the video, the kids destroying their instruments at the end of the video could show them taking out their anger of their parents divorcing on them.