You're Beautiful Part 2

You’re Beautiful Part 2

Eminem – Without Me

Written By Aaron

The music video for ‘Without Me’ and the lyrics really capture the persona of Eminem, lively, funny, comedic, fast and memorable. We all remember that backing track and that silly costume that he wears throughout. Directed by Joseph Kahn and written by Eminem, it is quite possibly one of the top three most memorable music videos made with Eminem. It features on the albums ‘The Eminem Show’ and ‘Curtain Call’. It primarily falls into the hip-hop, although it is more comedy hip-hop than impactful hip-hop. It features fast lyrics and flashy visuals, which are common in hip-hop videos. It features all different kinds of performance based visuals with Eminem and Dr Dre as the main characters. It tells the story of a superhero, Dr Dre, and his sidekick, Eminem, as they are alerted to a child who has purchased an explicit Eminem album and must track him down to stop him from listening to it. Alongside this there are shots of different scenes featuring Eminem and Dr Dre as different characters, in an almost parody sense.

There are a lot of different points throughout the video in which the lyrics and visuals align. Right at the very start, in one of the more memorable verses, the lyric ‘two trailer park girls go round the outside’ we can see Eminem waking up alongside two women, presumably the trailer park girls. Immediately after this, during the lyric ‘Shady’s back, tell a friend’, we see various colourful characters telling one another that Slim Shady has returned, perfectly personifying the lyrics. A major point of the relationship between lyrics and visuals throughout the song is that the main story of the song will cut away to some form of parody or joke, which will usually emphasise the lyrics. When we hear the lyric ‘when I get shocked at the hospital by the doctor when I’m not cooperating’ we see Eminem in a hospital gown literally getting shocked by defibrillators. This happens a lot throughout the video, where the lyrics are visualised literally through video.

There isn’t really much of a relationship between the music and the visuals, as this is a hip-hop song with a comedy video, so the camera doesn’t really cut to the beat. The video does however cut to the lyrics, but not to the beat. There are certain points throughout that the music is personified in the visuals through dancing. Near the end when Eminem and Dr Dre are driving, we see them bobbing their heads in time with the music. The main reason there isn’t much of a relationship between the music and visuals is that the only actual music is the backing track. Most of the reason people listen to hip-hop is the singer, so there isn’t much point making an incredible song, as it will be drowned out by the singer.

There are lots of close ups of the artist, as this is a hip-hop song, and they are quite necessary to sell the image of the artist. The record label was probably mainly looking to sell the music video on its flash and memorable visuals; however it could also be on its lyric to visual relationship. The main image of the artist being shown is of different and wildly crazy costumes and sets, this is to sell his crazy and unpredictable persona.  The video is very similar to previous videos by the artist as most of them are crazy and weird. In one song he wears a pair of fake buttocks and sits on a man’s face, so he is well known for being a bit strange, making this video nothing new. This means the video isn’t really a change of pace, the video itself is different to all the others, obviously, but the main theme remains the same, weird and memorable.

The main artist isn’t really on sexual display in the literal sense; it is parodied at certain points throughout the video, but isn’t meant to be a serious thing. At the start, however, the ‘trailer park girls’ are made to look like prostitutes, having just woke up with Eminem in bed.  There are certain points throughout the video, mainly during the shots inside the car, where Eminem will thrust his crotch at the camera, obviously meant to be in an offensive, sexual manner. Right near the end of the song we see Eminem sat, dressed as a terrorist, in a cave. The shot uses a fake news border, ENN instead of CNN, to show it is on a live TV show. There is also a recurring theme of a TV show called ‘True Story’ a Jeremy Kyle style show. These are probably used to reference the fictional ‘Eminem Show’, the name of the album.

The music video very obviously references other forms of media, as stated above, with reality TV and news programmes being just a few. It also references game shows and comic books. Throughout the video, as we cut back to Eminem and Dr Dre, we see comic style banners, exclamations and text boxes, all used to reference the fact that the video is about a superhero, ‘Rap Boy’. During the lyric ‘I know you got a job Ms Cheney, but your husbands heart problem is complicated’ we see Eminem on the set of another fictional TV show, this time about electrocuting people, accompanied by an elderly man with jump cables attached at each nipple, a reference to the heart problem and how electric shots are used to remedy the more severe ones.  This is probably to reference how the media will make a TV show out of about anything these days.

The music video is primarily performance based, showing the artist with close ups and in different costumes throughout. It is also slightly narrative based, in that it tells the story of Eminem or ‘Rap Boy’ coming back from retirement to stop a child from listening to explicit lyrics by Eminem. It could also be construed as a concept based video, as it makes a jab at a lot of different forms of media and even references Eminem’s personal life. The lyric ‘Shady’s back’ could be a reference to how the album was released at a rough time in his life, with him having been in the news for drug related offenses.

In conclusion, this is a very memorable video; some would say it’s even more memorable than the actual lyrics. It touches on a lot of different points in media and the real world, making jokes about TV and even other celebs, alive or dead. It is a performance based hip-hop video that will be around for a while. It is used to sell not only the artist, but the album and the song, and maybe even future albums with its flash visuals which have become a staple of Eminem. It won many awards for best music video and the song won a few Grammys too, all of which just go to show how important a music video is.