Music Video Analysis: The Lonely Island

     Music, along with books and television are is one of the most common and accessible forms of media and one of the biggest staples when it comes to music is the videos. Music videos were once almost as important to music as the artists themselves. They promote the band and help illustrate the song's message while providing a new dimension to the song.

Yeah, these guys

     One of my favourite musical groups is The Lonely Island, a musical comedy group formed by Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone and SNL's Andy Samberg. Their song Spring Break Anthem is a particular favourite of mine because it showcases their hilarious sense of humor as well making a fair point about what is socially accepted these days. The video shows college guys on spring break doing stereotypical, awful spring break guy things inter-cut with shots of them planning a wedding and getting married to other men. The whole video combines together with the song to show how ridiculous it is that the things people do on spring break is accepted while gay marriage is seen as weird or crazy by many people still.

Construction of Reality

     The reality portrayed in this video is fairly similar to that of their other videos, but sticks a little closer to our reality then most of their songs. It slightly exaggerates the behavior of college students over spring break, unfortunately not enough to make the fact that behavior like this is considered normal less depressing. The video is made this way to visually promote how ridiculous behavior like this is while entertaining the audience. The song is also made this way to sound like one of the songs you'd typically hear at a spring break party. Overall, the video fits well with the rest of The Lonely Island's songs and adds quite a bit to the song itself.

Codes and Conventions

     I love this song because it is full of stereotypes about party music and college students on spring break but it uses them in a way that doesn't just make fun of them, but uses them to make a valid point. The song screams typical crazy party music, young people drinking and partying, half naked girls and general awful people party activities. It combines this with an incredibly stereotypical portrayal of  students partying over spring break doing all these crazy, drunken and incredibly awful things. The stereotypes are used as a large part of the video to get the message across. 

     

Creeds and Values

     The most prominent value expressed in this song is how ridiculous it is that, while the crazy, terrible things college students do while partying over spring break is considered normal the concept of gay men wanting to have the right to get married is seen as insane by so many people. While portraying college students as irresponsible and awful who get away with doing awful things over vacation, gay men are portrayed as generally normal; doing things any couple would do when planning a wedding. The video makes fun of the people who do this ridiculous partying and supports homosexuals who want to get married and want to care about each other and have rights like everybody else. http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/9143-the-lonely-island/

Commercial

     The video for Spring Break Anthem is a very effective way to promote not only the song, but the entire Wack album itself. The video is not only funny, but it also premiered on Zach Galifinakis's show Between Two Ferns and starred him and James Franco along with The Lonely Island. The song is aimed at young adults and fans of musical comedy and it hits it right on the mark by using well known guest stars and using a video that looks a lot like a lot of modern party music. The song itself doesn't work as well without the video and it helps bring the admittedly not subtle message of the song together to make an incredibly entertaining song.  

     While the point of videos are definitely to promote the band and their albums to some extent but this is one of the few videos I have seen lately that doesn't seem as commercial and try-hard-ish. The video is funny and entertaining and promotes a really positive message and is overall a very awesome video.