'Stan - Eminem'

This music video follows a closer narrative structure. It is all based around the star image, of whom which is Eminem.

We see from the video a very disturbed character who has a clear obsession with Eminem. We see him dye is hair, become aggressive when listening to his music etc. The narrative is about the character who idolises Eminem. We see a clear beginning, middle and end. At the beginning we see the girlfriend (Dido who features in the film) tossing and turning... she is also pregnant. We then see the boyfriend dying his hair blonde which is creating the idea that he is copying Eminem's look. Throughout the narrative we see the frustration of the boyfriend writing to Eminem about his life, relating it to Eminem's like the fact he has a father/son bad relationship as well. He gets cross with the girlfriend repeatedly and treats her badly. There is a clear dramatic irony in that we, the audience, see that the letters the boyfriend is trying to get through to Eminem don't arrive to him because they either don't get sent out properly or Eminem himself is just too busy to read the letters. This results the boyfriend crashing the car with the pregnant girlfriend in the back and killing her.

The conflict is never resolved because it results in the boyfriend never getting an answer so he kills the girlfriend, and the letter Eminem finally writes to the boyfriend is written to late. We follow the boyfriend mainly throughout the sequence as the lyrics suggest what he is feeling. We are led to relate to this character because we see that he is extremely troubled, but there is slight sympathy for him.

The idea of who is the hero/villain etc is not so clear in the sequence as we follow quite a few different conflict ideas to identify who we feel is a clear villain or a clear hero. There are 3 different conflicts being shown in this sequence: 1. the conflict of the boyfriend trying to write to Eminem, 2. the conflict of the boyfriend character with himself, and 3. the conflict between the boyfriend and the girlfriend.

Iconography, sound, mise-en-scene and music are all so important throughout the video. Iconography is used in resembling the obsession the character has for Eminem... we see him in his creepy den, which is covered in Eminem posters. The mise-en-scene helps set the mood in the video. It is very dark; this is reflected through the lighting, which in the house is dark, a sickly yellow colour, and lots of silhouettes of windows etc. They have also put in thunder and lightning and rain in the video. The music itself is vital because the lyrics help suggest the feelings of the characters, and the sound just helps add to the mood such as lightning.