Foo Fighters 'Learn to Fly' Music Video Analysis:

This particular video is by the ‘Foo Fighters’ and was directed by Jesse Peretz. In order to analyse this video, I will be making references to Andrew Goodwin’s six point music analysis from his book, 'Dancing in the distraction factory'. The plot of the video follows two airline mechanics played by Jack Black and Kyle Gass who hide ‘world domination’ sleeping powder in the coffee machine in which in capitates everyone who drinks coffee.  The video is very comical and the band plays various different characters in order to make the video funny and give it a different twist. The costumes worn and the mise-en-scene is very important within the video as they both express the different characters to the audience. The video is primarily narrative based but also includes performances by the ‘Foo Fighters’ on the television on the plane and stage performances are also shown throughout.

One of Goodwin’s theories focuses on the relationship between the visuals and the lyrics of the video; within ‘Learn to fly’ there are numerous links between the two. The lyrics focus on the subject of flying, ‘learn to fly high’ and ‘looking to the sky to save me’ which relates to the fact that the video is set on a plane and also because many of the characters within the video take the supposedly ‘sleeping powder’ in which has various weird affects. This therefore proving that the visuals definitely do illustrate the lyrics of the song. This particular video, however, contradicts Goodwin’s third theory of links between the music and the visuals. ‘Learn to fly’ does not follow this as the video closely focuses on the plot and narrative instead of illustrating the beats and pitches of the music within the video via editing and changes of the pace for example. The edits within this video are in contrast with the music as they are unusually slow paced and the music is very fast paced. Within this video it is also very clear that the ‘Foo Fighters’ are featuring the genre characteristics of heavy rock within both their video and their song. The characteristics of heavy rock usually include: an electric guitar as the leading instrument, a band consisting of 2-5 members, a rebellious theme and performances featured within the video. To add to this, rock bands are usually inspired by previous, older rock bands, in the ‘Foo Fighters’ case it is ‘Led Zepplin'.

Within Goodwin’s theories, he also mentions how many videos include intertextual references to other media sources, such as other music videos, films etc. This video by the ‘Foo Fighters’ was inspired by the film ‘Airplane’ and the video itself is meant to be a parody of this film. Features of this film that are included within the video are obviously, the setting, the characters and the aspects of the plot. To add to this, stereotypical airhostesses are also featured within this video, they are made to look very attractive, flirtatious and are wearing tight uniforms,  this relates to Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘male gaze’  as the male passengers on the plane stare at the female airhostess in a very dominant way trying to get their attention. Laura Mulvey’s theory also relates to Goodwin’s theory of the notion of looking and how women are most definitely presented as sex objects for male pleasure within the majority of music videos.

Goodwin’s penultimate theory is on ‘Voyeurism’, this focuses on the use of screens and other objects to focus primarily on the band and the main artist, in this case Dave Grohl. This theory is shown within this video when performances from the band are shown on the plane’s televisions. As well as this, the majority of the music video includes close ups of the band and in particular David Grohl. These close ups are included within the video as they are demanded by the record label as it is a priority to focus on the band.