The Ghost of You: A (not so) Quick Analysis

Alright, all, going to do something a bit different here. Instead of my usual meandering musings, I'm going to do an analysis. Of what? Of a music video.

Though I have been listening to the band My Chemical Romance for a few years now, I had yet to see the music video for "The Ghost of You", their fourth single off of the album "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge". While looking through their youtube montage, I stumbled across it.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUpvTMis-Y&feature=channel

The video begins with a USO dance set in 1944. They use the common grey filter to create a sense of an earlier age, adding to the WWII formal uniforms and the hairstyles of the women in the video. We cut over to a show of the band onstage, also in formal greens, with time-period appropriate hairstyles and instruments (saving that bassist Mikey Way is playing an early model Fender P Bass, not sold until 1951).

The USO dance scene cuts to a WWII battlefield, troops landing on what is meant to be Normandy Beach via ship. The camera is shaky, with the rougher chorus playing behind, the color scheme now completely muted in grey and blue tones. Each of the band members are revealed to be on the ship, along with familiar faces from the dance hall crowd.

As the chorus drops into the smoother tones of verse two, so the viewer also drops back into the dance hall. Images of soldiers dancing with civilian women are juxtaposed with scenes of the band in a bar. Verse two wraps up as the soldiers are leaving their dance partners. As the music builds, soldiers in full battle dress run across the floor, the scene washing across the screen as a literal wave which turns each remaining couple on the floor to battlefield wreckage on the beach.

Abrupt, fleeting shots of the troops storming the beach flash across the screen, the camera sometimes submerged in the ocean. Soldiers run toward, around, and past the camera, adding to the frantic, fearful feel of the scene.

A sudden cut back to the barroom in the same muted tones as the beach reveal lead singer Gerard Way comforting his brother Mikey, lending a sense of foreshadowing to the next several scenes. We jump back and forth from the battle to the barroom, Gerard's talkative gestures in the bar mirroring his gestures and directions on the battlefield. The scenes of battle are accompanied by the choral lyrics (Never coming home, never coming home), creating a feeling of sorrow, fear, and almost desperation.

The song settles into a mellow spot. We cut back to the band at the bar just in time for the lyrics "for all the ghosts that are never gonna catch me" - the band in the empty dance hall, turning from the camera - "if I fall," - a shot of the woman Mikey had been dancing with - "if I fall" - Mikey turning to look at her again in the midst of the departing soldiers, making eye contact - "down." he turns and walks away from her.

Heavy artillery fire surrounds Mikey, sheltering behind an anti-watercraft spike, as the bridge pours over the scene. In an attempt to move up the shore, he runs and is shot, falling slowly as his brother, Gerard, silently screams his name. A medic appears and attempts to help Mikey as the rest of the band / his squadmates hold Gerard out of the firing lines. Subsequent rapid-fire shots of the bar are off-balance, shots of Gerard onstage singing are heavily vertically blurred, visuals of the battle scattered by men running in front of the camera and flying debris. The song ends with Mikey's death despite the medic's best efforts. The sounds of the battle are finally audible, with a panning closeup of Gerard's shocked expression as he watches his brother die on the field.



This is a spectacular video, in my humble opinion, for several reasons; For one, the time and effort put into this video is evident. Each soldier has an infantry patch, the wave transition was phenomenal, and I am impressed, as per usual, of the ability MCR has to not only create their songs, but act out the intention behind the song in a video as well. The intensity of emotion is not commonly found in music videos, which is one of the reasons this particular video skyrocketed to the top of MTV's request charts soon after its release.

The fact that they used the sibling relationship between Mikey and Gerard Way was a spectacular idea. The use didn't play such a pivotal point in the story that new viewers would be confused, but was important enough that old fans would catch the significance. It turned the video from a sad war song to a song about losing someone you love dearly.



Though this video did have its askew details and faults, I would label it a success. This video played a pivotal role in developing MCR's widespread fan-base. I hope to see more videos of this caliber from them in the future.


All I know is that it's past midnight yet again, and I spend much too much time browsing Youtube.

A Literary Reference

Some literary references should never be made.

Such Excitement!

Yes, yes, excitement abounds! I have decided, at the poking and prodding of one Hannah V., to create a blog for my 'novel'. It's still a baby, though, the remaining project of NaNoWriMo past, but I figure this might give me the incentive to finish on a timely schedule. Fingers completely crossed!

P.S. : http://peshmerga-novel.blogspot.com/


All I know is that it's way too early for such hijinks, and I have a math class first thing in the morning.