Goodwin Theory

Mujo Muratovic

What is Goodwin's Theory

His 6 steps:• Relationship between lyrics and the visuals.• Relationship between the music and visuals.• Genre icons and styles.• Close ups of artists.• Iconography.• Voyeurism.

Eminem – Without Me

• The video which I have decided to analyse is Eminem's – Without me, I decided to use this music video because it follows the principles of Goodwin's theory and is also the type of music video and genre I would like to use for my own music video when I start producing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVkUvmDQ3HY

Relationship between lyrics and visuals

“two trailer park girls go round the outside”

“Shady's back”

“tell a friend, Guess who's back” “their parents still listen to Elvis”

“the best thing since wrestling” “Though I'm not the first king of controversy”

I have found from watching this music video that it is both illustrative and amplifying. This video is illustrative as the lyrics seem to be going along with the music video majority of the time, there were also some cases where the text on the screen was the same context as the being played over the video which I will give an example of in the next slide. The video is also amplifying in the sense that Eminem is constantly being shown in a car or in front of a large E where he sings which I will also discuss in the later slides.

“Guess who's back”

Within this scene we hear Eminem saying “Guess who's back”, what we see is illustration on the bottom of the image following a comical theme, it says “word spread that our hero has returned”, this text links directly to Eminem saying “Guess who's back” as it suggests that Eminem is the hero and this is being confirmed by the lyrics in the song.

Illustrative example

Amplifying example

Here Eminem continues to jump from one scene to this scene showing him rapping at the camera, this is done through the majority of the video, he does respond to most of his lyrics while rapping which is seen in the second image showing that this is not disjuncture and that the lyrics are related to the video.

“a little bit”

Relationship between music and visuals

Within these print screens it shows the singer reacting to the music, within the first print screen Eminem is making the impression that his heart is pounding and is in rhythm with the music which could also be related to the sound of a heart as it is a deep drum kick. The second scene shows Dr dre and Eminem together in a car nodding their heads to the music and are in sync with the beat which shows that they are reacting to the music.

2:49 – 2:51

Within this period of the music video you hear the beat and dr dre starting to nod his head to it, a second later you see Eminem join him and start bobbing their head in rhythm with the music. This whole sequence is more amplifying than anything else as the artist are responding to the music and are not doing something off topic to it. Furthermore this is a scene which is also repeated throughout the video.

Close-ups of artists

Close-ups of Eminem are used a lot throughout this video as he is the main star and during the period of this song he was one of the biggest rap stars in the world so it is important they would have had many close ups of him to promote him and his music.

Although Eminem was the main star within this video and the only person performing his music dr dre was involved. Dr dre produced Eminem's music at the time and he was a very important feature for him in almost every one of his songs, however wherever dr dre was focused on by himself the lighting wasn’t as bright and revealing as when it were with Eminem as Eminem was still the main star within the music video.

Iconography

This Eminem music video carries a obvious Batman and Robin coming book/ TV show theme where they use many things you would usually see within a comic book and also a classic batman film with the “Krack” when the woman punches Eminem. They focus very much on trying to make the video seem as much like a superhero movie as they can while also adding typical Eminem controversy in it.