Music video analysis Gotye - Easy Way Out

The music video for Gotye’s song Easy Way Out interextualise a range of different things. Predominantly because of this I personally in that this music video works really well and it is very interesting as is draws upon one of my all-time favourite films. As a surface narrative we see a young man running away from something, instinctively you assume it to be the insect like creatures and place them as the role of the antagonistic characters. Then you are introduced to the female role who again you assume to be the love interest of the protagonist. As such the surface narrative is that a young man is trying the escape these creatures to his sweetheart. However what I believe to be the actual narrative is not too far off. The story for me is that he’s under medical supervision of these insect like creatures or we could say “surgeons”, and what is playing out in the music video (him running) is in his subconscious. Flickers between what is his reality as a test subject and what is in his mind merge together making the music video interesting. The movement between illustration of the lyrics and something completely unrelated to what the music is saying makes the video unusual and watchable over and over again. As the video comes to a close the insect creature injects what I assume to be a sedative into the IV. The edit used to close the music video accentuates that feeling that the character is in a hospital environment because the black flickers reflect the flickers of the heartbeat as someone takes their last breaths before death or like a machine failing or as a candle burns out. To continue, I found the intertextuality of this music video very exciting and something that I hadn’t seen before. The 1988 Japanese film Akira is a dystopian story about Neo-Tokyo’s destruction at the hands of a young boy who holds the power of Akira, a calamity. The two protagonists of the film are Kaneda and Tetsuo, in Gyote’s music video he takes both the characters and merges them together, producing the young man in the music video. Tetsuo at one point in Akira is admitted to hospital but escapes such like shown in the music video. However, Kaneda in the film has an iconic shell suit coat that is bright red, like the one the young man in the music video wears. This intertextuality for me is very exciting and unusual to see in a music video for an artist such as Gotye. To continue, the female character is also slightly intertextualised. The 2008 hit game Mirrors Edge follows a free running vigilante. In the music video the characterisation of the girl is very similar to that of the lead in Mirrors Edge. The method of linking the music to the images is mostly done through the use of the beats of the instruments and illustration of the lyrics. The beat of the music coincides with that of his feet hitting the ground as he runs and also the movement of his arms. Also, the three dimensions brain scan at the beginning creates a connection between sound and visuals, the buzzing electronic sound (zzz zzz zzz zzz zzz zzz zzz zzz) almost express what the sound would look like as an image. Furthermore, at the beginning when they lyrics say “putting on a brave face” the character closes his eyes and scrunches up his face as if forcing him to carry on with whatever he is out to accomplish. Other techniques are used to express different meanings. Pain for one is cleverly accentuated through the use of fewer frames per second. When he clenches his arm in pain at approximately 40 seconds, a lot less frames are used however his progress across the screen is at the same speed illustrating the heart wrenching agony he feels in his arm and how time can go a lot slower when in pain, seconds feel like minutes. And transitions also show implication; fades are frequently used to stress the feeling of nostalgia (for the woman). The colour theme is red, orange and black. These warm colours are associated with oriental culture again linking to the Asia-Pacific theme of the music video. Moreover, as the location is in a large city the fiery and aggressive colours can express a dystopian future; similar to that of the ending to Akira, where the futuristic Tokyo is finally destroyed.