Music Video Essay - Chris Cunningham.

Chris Cunningham.

Chris Cunningham is a British video artist, he was born in 1970 and has been directing music videos since 1996, and he was born in Reading but grew up in Suffolk. Most of Chris’ work includes science fiction or horror themes. I am going to be talking about three music videos that he has directed; two of them are by Aphex Twin and the other one is by Bjork.

The first video I’m going to talk about is Aphex twins Windowlicker; it is a ten minute long parody of contemporary hip-hop gangsta music videos, the video features two men that swear a lot who are window shopping for women, they find two women whoa re not very happy to see them, they argue and then a ridiculously long limousine crashes in to them, the man in the limo is very ugly but you can see he is wealthy and powerful.

The video has some colours in it but you can see that it is very dull and the lighting is quite dark, in all of Chris’ videos he uses the same colour scheme which is very dull and washed out. There are a lot of medium shots and wide shots in this music video, which fit well with the type of video because you can’t see a lot of emotion or detail in the actor’s faces. Near the start of the video there are a few close ups of the women’s bodies which make you feel uncomfortable because Chris is trying to make you look at women’s bodies in the same way that men look at women’s bodies but when the women are shown in like a different light the close ups automatically change to medium shots because of the way that the men change their perspective of these women. At the start of the video the pace is slow because its very calm and the man is driving slow so the pace of the shots goes with the pace of the car, also there is no music at the start until the actor turns the radio on and the pace speeds up a little bit. This music video is a combination of narrative and concept based, it has a beginning, middle and an ending about these two men trying to pick up women and it goes horribly wrong and it is concept based because Chris Cunningham had to think of an idea because he couldn't make the video performance based, the idea of the music video was to change the gender and make the audience think of how we look at each other, and the way that men look at women's bodies like a piece of meat until they see the face of the body - this is voyeurism, i think chris put voyeurism into the video because he wanted the audience to realise that the way we look at each other is wrong and makes me feel uncomfortable. I think Chris also had the idea of two men acting as two 'Gangsters' by swearing a lot and using the "N" word to make the audience and the real 'Gangsters' see what they are being like. There is an intertextual reference in this music video it is when Aphex Twin is dancing when he gets out of the limo, he grabs his crotch like Michael Jackson does, this shows that he wanted to have someone elses motif in his video. The purpose of this music video was to market the band and the song but i also think it was to get a message across to the audience about voyeurism and the way we look at each other. I think the target audience would be late teens and adults as the video is too sexual for a child, the audience would also be Aphex twin fans and i also think it is more of a video for men because of the bodies and the way that Chris Cunningham has directed it seems like he is trying to get a message across to me to say that this is how you look at women and there bodies. The theme of this music video is dark and disturbing, it also makes me feel very uncomfortable, for a certain type of an audience it could be humorous but it was strange and weird. There is also a unique image at the start of the video and on the mans umbrella i think this represents Aphex twin.

The second video im going to talk about is another one of Aphex twins, it is called 'Come to Daddy' the name itself is weird and perverted, the video is about an evil spirit being released from a television as an old lady and her dog walk past and the dog urinates on the television thats when the weird spirit starts to form and the old lady runs away, there are also a group of children running around causing trouble with weird faces, they look like the Apex twin star, i think he has used his face on all the children to imply that he usually causes trouble and children usually cause loads of trouble so he wants to use his face to connote that he is a trouble maker, also in the video when the evil spirit is released from the television he gets the group of children to huddle around him while hes naked, this makes me feel uncomfortable and gives a bad impression of him, the impression of him being a pedophile, but it also suggests that the evil spirit is the childrens leader and they want to cause trouble for him. There is also that unique image in this video like in windowlicker which represents Aphex twin.

The shots are the same as the ones in Window licker, there are lots of medium shots and wide shots but there are more close ups in this one, i think that more close ups work in come to daddy because the theme of the video is very dark and   disturbing like windowlicker but it is more scary because of the close ups, they give more emotion and detail of the evil spirit and of the elderly woman, if they used medium shots and wide shots throughout the whole video it would not have as much meaning or wouldnt be as scary. The colours are very similar to aphex twins other video - window licker, there are colours but they look very washed out and dull, the lighting is very dark to fit in with the theme, chris could not have used bright colours or a very light set as it would not be as intense as it is now. The pace of the music video starts off slow and gets faster as the music video gets more terrifying, you can tell that window licker and come to daddy are directed by Chris because of the way he directs videos, very dark and includes horror themes but uses the same pace for most of his video, he starts off slow when not much is happening but gets faster when the videos get more dark and disturbing, this fits in very well with the themes of Chris' music videos. This video is also a combination of narrative and concept based, the video tells a story of how an innocent elderly women is walking her dog around the council estate and the dog barks when he senses something, it tells the story of how walking your dog can end badly, I think all of Chris' work is very similar and i think that he wants the audience to know that some of the things we do are wrong and he wants us to feel uncomfortable while watching his videos so that we realise that its wrong but also very weird, i think thats the concept of this music video. In the music video at the start when he uses that unique image that represents aphex twin, the image switches from that to a symbol of a man and keeps switching back and forth from those images, this video is maybe suggesting that its for men to watch so that could be the audience but i would not recommend young children watching it as it is not suitable. The purpose of this music video is to market the band but also to get his message to the audience about things that we do when they're wrong.


The final video I'm going to talk about is Bjork - All is full of Love, the video is about a woman robot that is being repaired by other machinery but it isn't going very well, there are sparks flying out and there is a water leak, as this is happening another woman robot is standing in front of her, as the first robot looks up all of the mistakes are clearing up, like going back in time, rewinding everything, the second robot offers her a hand and they are staring into each others eyes, then it changes shots to the two robots being very intimate with each other and touching each other, that is most of the video apart from the end when there are just flashes of wires and other machine parts.

The theme of this music video is very dark like the colours and the same as both of Aphex twins videos, all of the colours look washed out except for the robots, they are white, but it is quite bright and I think that makes them stand out more, there is also a scene in this music video of a bright blue this implies that it is heaven as it looked like the sky and it looked like the camera was rising so this could suggest that where they are isn't nice and because they are stuck to other machinery repairing them and always on them maybe that's there idea of hell and the bright blue connoted heaven, the theme is also eye opening for me and the audience, I think Chris Cunningham is trying to say that it doesn't matter who you love or what you love as long as you love them. The lighting was quite dull but that just shows that Chris Cunningham likes his lighting to be dull and dark. The editing pace was very different to Chris' other videos, the shots lasted very long the pace was also very slow. This went well with the type of video, because it was very passionate and intimate it wouldn't of suited a fast editing pace or fast movements of the shots. This video is concept based and performance based as i think Chris thought of the idea of two women robots to be intimate and fall in love to see how the audience reacted to that, it is also performance based because the first robot is singing the song that is playing (Bjork -All is full of love). The target audience would be Bjork fans, but i also think it would appeal more to women and it could help some women if they are too afraid to be gay, this video could give them confidence and let them know that it doesn't matter who you love, what you are or what you love, as long as you love it/them and it/they love you back.


My personal opinion on Chris Cunningham and his work is that it is very good, but extreme at the same time, all of these videos made me feel very uncomfortable they all have different reasons to why but i think Come to Daddy was the one that i couldn't watch again and again because of the perverted man and the way he huddles the children when hes naked, and Bjorks video made me feel uncomfortable because of the intimate and passion between two people made it hard for me to watch, not because that its two women its just because i think that the amount of sex that was in it should be kept behind closed doors, whoever you are. I think that Chris' work is very interesting and i wouldn't mind writing about him again, but I would never watch one of those videos ever again. These videos were very shocking but they made me think of some of the things we do in this world, e.g windowlicker - had a concept of how men look at women and how women look at men, watching this video made me realise its wrong to look at someone like that, another example would be Bjorks video - had a concept of loving anyone or anything and it made me realise that its not wrong to love the same gender or love something different to you and i think that video was very eye opening, Come to Daddy - had a concept of an evil spirit but that video didnt make me realise anything as i already knew that huddling children while being naked was wrong. I think Chris Cunningham does these shocking videos with such extreme is to show the audience that these things are wrong and if he didnt express himself and how he directs his videos then i wouldnt have realised any of these three important things in life.


Chris Cunningham - Purpose of his videos.

Chris Cunningham's videos have all different kind of purposes, but I think the main purpose of his video 'Window licker' is to get people to look at the way men look at women and force them to think about it, this video was very shocking for me to watch and I think that it is a little sexist as the men are looking at women in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, Chris uses his videos to express his feelings and force people to get to know him, I don't think it is about being liked or disliked, its about how you produce your work in different ways - Chris' videos are shocking to his audience but it is memorable and people will know him for the difference in his videos compared to other peoples. Chris is also advertising his services so that other artists and bands can see what he can do. 

In Chris' other video, 'Come to Daddy' another of Aphex twins, there is another life form in a television and it is being released from it and he huddles children while he is naked, I think that the purpose of this music video was to make people feel uncomfortable and make them realise that its wrong, the purpose is also to entertain the audience as it doesn't have to be happy or sad or anything it can be shocking too, this video makes you think about different things going on in the world, I think Chris' purpose was to express his creativity in a shocking way, but it just shows that you can entertain people with the most shocking scenes. This video is advertising everyone included in it - the film maker, the band, the industry and also the video. I feel like this video has a message about paedophilia and that is also one of the purposes. I think that Chris used this video to show that the media creates monsters in its own way, because the monster is coming out of the TV screen, this made me think a lot about how we influence these things because they are always in our faces and we are forcing people to look at these things.

In 'All is full of Love' by Bjork, Chris expresses his work in a different way as it wasn't so shocking to watch but still a bit uncomfortable, the purpose of this one was to show people that it doesn't matter who or what you love as long as you're happy, it teaches people that it doesn't matter if you're gay or straight as long as you are happy and that you shouldn't care about what other people think, I think this video has a moral to its story and it made me change how I see people and things in the world, that was one of Chris' main purposes in this video.

In all of Chris Cunningham's videos there are many purposes, but the main one is to change peoples views on things even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, all of his videos are very memorable and I think that is another main purpose as it doesn't matter if you're liked or disliked you can still change the views of people in the most shocking ways. All of Chris' videos made me think about different things, some things that are wrong and some things that people think are wrong but aren't. These videos promote Chris, the band/artist and the industry, these videos are like a portfolio of Chris' work and even though they are shocking and made me feel uncomfortable I will always remember them, advertising his work is probably the main reason he does so many shocking things. 

The industries purpose of these videos is to make money and advertise their services to different artists and bands, the industry encourages more people to buy them as they are the ones getting most of the money, when a video accompanies a song it automatically doubles their profit in the financial business as the single will not only be played on the radio and audio only services like iTunes but also on YouTube, music channels and the music charts.
The bands/artists purpose of these music videos is to also promote their songs and make money, I also think it is a way to feel close to their fans as they are giving them a video as well as a song, they're showcasing their music to get liked and get more fans, this will encourage people to their gigs and performances, if they did not have videos to their songs then they would eventually die out in the music industry.