While this music video is like 27 years old, it's the best, for two main reasons.
1) It's visually awesome. Especially for it's time.
2) It mixes two things I love. Comic Books, and 80's Music.
heehee
So this music video follows the story of a girl who happens to be reading a comic book in a café and totally has the hots for this comic character when the comic book just so happens to come to life.
And she's taken into the 2D-world, and falls super in-love with comic character, you see.
Then, tragedy strikes when the café owner interprets the girl's absence as that she left without paying and so she tosses the comic book in the bin and so the comic book world falls into chaos.
The girl manages to escape back to the real-world, and runs out of the café to see what happens next in the comic-- And handsome comic character appears to have been whacked one-- or killed-- But--
Handsome comic character breaks from the comic, and becomes real.
And they all lived happily ever after.
The shot above, simply, introduces the male protagonist of the narrative. Though it's a drawing, and not-- you know-- live action, the extreme close up of the character's features allows the audience a slight sense of intimacy with the character yousee.
The beginning sequence, (0:00 - 0:37) presents to the audience the world of the comic.
And then, our female protagonist.
Who is typically pale and cute and girlish. But not completely girlish because I mean
she's reading racing comics clearly meant for boys so
that's a bit of smashing stereotypes which is great.
Now here's the beautiful part where things start getting really cool.
That 2D-world hand reaching out into the 3D-world. It's just incredibly clever how they entwined live-footage and hand-drawn animation. This mixed media is beautiful to watch.
And here's another really clever part. They're really playing around with the whole Cartoon/Reality, and it's utterly brilliant.
What's this? A threat? Here comes the conflict. May I say how I love the drawing+animation style, and how wonderfully sketchy and choppy it is, but how beautifully it flows together.
There's not really at all much to say about morality and representation, because it's...
From the 80's--
Simpler days, n'all.
The two characters are not at all explored in terms of class, or regionality. All that can be inferred is that they are a male and female, both late teens to young adults, and their clothing and hair very much reflect the style at the time.
The lack of depth of the characters puts the narrative into full focus. While a music video is a brief amount of time, and not the idealistic time to introduce a well-thought-out character, I do wish the two characters were explored slightly more.
The music video follows a simple, straightforward narrative, establishing a few, one-dimensional characters...
And follows it through until the end.
