Similar Text AnalysisJamiroquai – Virtual InsanityGenre: Acid JazzCLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

The lyrics to the song depict a world that humanity is heading toward in which technology has gone to extremes. It makes the audience aware of how modern technology is warping what is normally considered immoral, one of the lines in the lyrics is ‘and now every mother, can choose the colour of her child that’s not nature’s way well that’s what they said yesterday’, this is, in my point of view, the strongest message of the song. The rest of the song carries through with the same tone of eventual decent into chaos, insanity and eventual fall of humanity. There are small quotes in the lyrics that imply this, like ‘When things are big That should be small‘, this is representative of the advances in the size of hardware like increasingly larger televisions.

The music video is both performance and concept driven, there are no visible examples of a narrative and the lyrics do not suggest one. Deconstruction of the video shows the singer dancing and singing across a room in which the floor is seemingly moving. As this video is concept driven many of the things that occur in the room are representative of the breakdown into insanity. The only apparent theme is the digression of sanity due to the advances in technology. Overall it asks the audience to evaluate their own humanity.

The colours in the background suggest innocence and purity as all the walls are white. This representation reflects the concept of the song and the complex being set by the lyrics, which as humanity develops technologically it is doomed to lose its sanity. The whole video is recorded in a padded room of which already has a direct connotation to insanity; it is commonly represented as where asylum patients are held.

The audience for this video really can only be fans of the genre or fans of Jamiroquai. Even though this is an Acid Jazz/Funk style song the video breaks nearly all conventions so it is only the song itself that makes clear, with the sound and style, what genre it is. It is more likely to be the style of dance and the visual effects used that would draw audience attention, as the video is not representative of any genre. However there are a few intertextual references making the video draw interest to the viewers that understand these references. They act almost like a special invitation singling out those viewers.

The singer himself is dressed to stand out; his clothes are very dark in colour and frame him so that he appears almost larger than life. He breaks conventions by not dressing overtly; his clothes are casual and are representative of the ‘everyday man’, unlike the standard connotations of a music video in which the singer is representative of the audience’s aspirations. However there is always aspirational value in music videos either the want to live like the artist in the music video or to have the lifestyle represented in the music video. This video does not follow these conventions instead it allows the audience to think about the concept being delivered. This song is targeted at a specific audience, it is meant to relate to a more intellectual audience, possibly university students as it is trying to convey a heavy message.

There are some intertextual references, these references may now be considered general knowledge but likely not to the mainstream. There are three very clear examples of the references.

The black bird seen in the video could be seen as a raven. To make a link between this and Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem ‘The Raven’ it was the main contributor to the narrator’s descent into insanity. It’s likely that this is the reference because if we were to take direct connotations of the raven it is more to do with the occult.

The cockroach that follows could be a reference to disgust but more likely due to the lyrics would relate to, ‘Cockroaches are symbolic of tenacity and longevity and could symbolize the

need for renewal, rejuvenation and self-cleansing of your psychological, emotional, or spiritual being.’ This would be representative to the nature of the lyrics, that everything is falling into insanity and all of this will end with a downfall.

In the video there is also a pool of blood leaking out from under the perspective of the camera, from under the sofa and out of the wall to the far right. This is likely a reference to ‘The Shining’ which followed a family who were left stranded in a hotel with a history of freakish deaths. The father in the family stranded there gradually went insane and

attempted to kill his family. There is a famous scene in the film of an elevator door opening and a large amount of blood gushing out, this is also the scene used in the official trailer to the film.

As this is a very unique video that does not follow conventions of standard music videos there are many common conventions that are lost. There is no reinforcement of popular ideologies such as sex, money and power, except for the obvious Hyper-reality. The video represents what can only be described as a visual breakdown to insanity with the moving floor and furniture and the blood appearing from under the furniture. These are incidents of hyper-reality as they must have been edited to be possible but it is also an example of what is overly real in the literal sense of hyper-reality.

The video is also visually interpreted as one shot, this is unique in a music video as it breaks the conventions of the more fast paced edits of a video with the variety of continuity edits used such as

matched action or matched movement. However there are edits used that focus the camera on a certain object

removing all other

perspectives, this creates illusions in which the audience sees what can seem as warping of the room. In this instance the chair is moving toward the camera then the focus is shifted toward the bird for a few seconds and in that time the chair is back in its original place. It is due to the use of two shots edited together in such a way that it appears as one shot through the entire video.The set was built to move around so that it appears that the floor is moving however the chairs also sometimes appear to move which aids the illusion. This though is done through the transition of the shots were some of the chairs are stuck to the walls.

The preferred audience reading of this text is easily attained as the song is very straight forward with its message. If they do take this reading then it implies that they would take a deep hard look at how their life is influenced by dependency on technology. However there is a possibility that the audience takes the oppositional reading but this is very unlikely due to the nature of the lyrics, on the other hand people who are materialistic and have the advanced technology may be against the preferred reading and be happy with the way the world is and where they are headed in it. However, I think most of the audience would take on a negotiated reading of the song this would be due to our natural reliance on devices that make our lives easier, accepting the message from the lyrics but taking no action to make a change.