Blinding Lights Textual Analysis

Blinding Lights textual analysis 

• There is a binary opposition between the mise-en-scene of blood makeup, and The Weeknd's happy facial expression, this creates the narrative that The Weeknd enjoys violence. Stereotypically, villains enjoy violence, and therefore this and could represent him as assuming an antagonistic role.
• The colour red indicates blood and violence, yet it could also act as symbolic coding for  boldness, illustrating The Weeknd to be confident in his liking for violence and terror, once again relating back to the villain narrative.
• The fast paced flickering lights ties into horror genre conventions, which typically act as proaretic coding for something bad happening. This correlates with the extreme bloodied makeup, and colour pallet of the opening scenes (red and black)
• The opening title is black with the word 'The Weeknd' in a bright red neon.
• The shaking camera angle presents a sense of distortion and confusion.
• The mise-en-scene of setting is a vibrantly lit shopping district, which contributes to this distorted atmosphere, due to the juxtaposing bright colours such as red, blue and yellow.
• The mise-en-scene of the Mercedes represents The Weeknd as wealthy and fashionable. A Mercedes is known to be expensive, and the sports design of this particular model is represented as cool, due to the unique headlights flashing red.
• The shaking camera angle during the driving scene replicates the motion of driving fast, immersing the audience into the scene. This also demonstrates The Weeknd's carefree attitude towards danger, further reinforcing his confident representation which has been present throughout this music video.
• The fast-paced editing of the dashboard, accelerator etc further contributes to this distortion.
• The binary opposition between the calm restaurant and the wild car ride, presents a sense of duality within The Weeknd's personality, perhaps representing him as versatile.
• The presence of foggy weather on the highway acts as hermeneutic coding, as the audience wonder what is being hidden behind the mist. This is later revealed to be a skyline. This contributes to a sense of duality once again.
• The cinematography is highly creative, and arguably represents a floating, high state of mind. The camera consistently spins, providing innovative shot angles, contributing to a sense of distortion and lack of reality.
• The Weeknd dances in the middle of an open road. The mise-en-scene of his red costume illustrates him to be a target, binary opposing the dull, grey surroundings of the road. This further represents him to be carefree, as despite knowingly dressed brightly for all to see, he does not care to acknowledge the danger.
• Red is present throughout, even in the traffic lights. Although this could have been included for a narrative purpose, explaining to the audience how The Weeknd is able to dance in the road, I would argue it serves an aesthetic purpose, due to the rebellious representation of him previously.
• The fast-paced editing of the woman acts as hermeneutic coding, as the audience do not get to see her full appearance, this creates mystery regarding what she looks like. We see her at one minute thirty seconds into the video.
• The woman is wearing a sparkling, white v-neck dress. This demonstrates her to be attractive from a hegemonic perspective, due to the clear intent of the producer to provide focalisation on her appearance. The v-neck design is partially revealing, perhaps connoting confidence, as the woman is unafraid to show her body. Similarly, the dress is tight, representing her confidence in her body and appearance.
• The close-up-shot of the woman's eyes allows for a focus on her heavy eye-makeup, representing her as glamorous and conscious of looking good. This presents the ideological perspective of the producer, as believing women should put time and effort into their appearance to earn the attention of a star like The Weeknd.

• The binary opposition between her soft movements and The Weeknd's harsher movements constructs women differently to men.
• Her costume is a jumpsuit, mixed with a stereotypically feminine design of sparkles.
• She is represented to be angelic, which is achieved by the symbolic coding of her white costume which links into purity, and the high-production values which allows her to move The Weeknd across the room using her powers.
• The audio slows down, correlating with the distorted colours and fast movement of the camera, contributing to the high motion of the music video.
• The reoccurring motif of the tunnel represents the movement between reality and distortion, as before and after the camera pans through this, the atmosphere changes.
• The colour pallet throughout the video is red, black, blue and gold. This could be used to symbolically represent the luxury (gold) embedded within an antagonistic life. (red and blue of police cars), (black representing darkness etc)
• The actress in the music video is called Miki Hamano, she is a Japanese model with a large social media following of 191k followers on instagram. This illustrates her to be exclusive, due to the  elitism which comes with being a model, as you are stereotypically expected to be beautiful.
  
• A lot of people within the comment section felt as if this music video demonstrated intertextuality with The Joker, due to the similar outfits and characteristics.