The Strokes are a revolutionary rock band formed in New York in 1998, the band consists of five long standing friends called Julian Casablancas, Nick Valensi, Albert Hammond Jr, Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti. Their rise to fame was almost instant after releasing their debut album in 2001 'Is This It', to which they recieved awards for Best Album, Band of the Year and Best New Act in 2002, and also more recently their first album was voted 'Album of the Decade' by popular indie rock magazine NME. Since then the band have produced two more albums 'Room on Fire' and 'First Impressions of Earth', and have played on countless major stages worldwide. The band are currently developing a fourth album, after a long awaited return from a break where the members have been doing different projects individually collabrating with other artists and making solo records.
The video below is of the song 'The End Has No End' a track taken off their first album 'Is This It' which I think is a brilliant song and video with plenty to analyise.
Genre
This song and the Strokes in general have been branded an indie rock/alternative garage rock style group, this is obvious within the video for a number of reasons. One of course would be the music that the band makes, with up tempo guitars and drums an established bassline and a rough but very talented voice from the singer which is typical of many indie rick style bands. As well as this the way in which the band dresses in the video says alot about them genre wise, with skinny jeans, leather jackets, long messy hair resulting in a retro and stylish band very typical of this particular genre. The lyrics also point towards the rock/indie genre, being quite catchy but at the same time also delivering a serious message, in this case about politics and also like the video expressing views on the life cycle in general.
Video
By watching the promotional video for 'The End Has No End' a number of things can be deduced from it, the first of these being that it is a mainly narrative structured with performance scenes by the whole band included. The narrative that is the major part of the video consists round a main character who is incidently the bands manager, it shows a high tempo and fast edited narrative of the main characters life, and the main stages throughout it, school, prom, graduation, realtionships and jobs. At 1.18 in the video we are shown the main character as an old man sat in a dark room with a black portal/door style thing towering over him as he is sat quite helpless fashion on a chair. It becomes apparent that this old man is looking back on his life before death, and the title of the song and the lyrics coinside with this idea. The video then continues at a high tempo with fast paced edits showing different highlights of the main characters life, with little cut scenes to the old man worsening and also shots of the band playing in a room surrounded by mirrors. Towards the end, at 2.28 we are shown the main character as an elderly man once more, this time the door style thing in shot with him reveals a bright growing light towards the top of it which engulfs the room in light. In my opinion this ties in with ideas of seeing light in the darkness before death indicated towards the afterlife, this also ties in very appropriately with the lyrics and the title the theme of 'the end has no end'.
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is quite prominent in this video as the actors used within the video could easily be linked by the viewer to other forms of media, for example film or music. The main examples of this within the video would be the inclusion of huge stars in the TV and film industry, Eva Mendes and Mila Kunis each of whom would be easily recognisable to anyone familiar with current forms of media. Another inclusion of intertextuality that would be less easy to recognise would be the main character in the film Ryan Gentles, the bands manager. This is a nicer thing to put in the video, in the sense that only the more devoted fans of The Strokes would recognise this and it would make them feel as if the band were trying to make a connection with them.
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