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.
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.
