The Bird and The Worm
v. The Bird and The Worm
The Bird and The Worm applies the singing performance mixed with narrative video concept where in here, Bert figures out youth anxiety feeling in various scenes.
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The first scene appears in the beginning of music video. Here, Bert anxiously sits in a messy room while other band members are not with him (Figure 113). He covers his head with upper part of hoodie to visually reinforce the anxiety feeling. In the previous subchapter before, it has been discussed that hoodie in Emo raises the sense of anxiety, mysterious and gloominess. The purpose of scene take in this figure is to show the anxiety and mysterious side of Emo experienced by the band members represented by Bert. In the next scene, he opens his hoodie while watching his surrounding area worriedly as if somebody was hunting him (Figure 114). The medium long shot are used in
those two scenes to focus on Bert‟s fear expression. While those scenes are lasting, he sings „he wears his heart safety pinned to his backpack, his backpack is all that he knows…shot down by strangers whose glances can cripple the heart and devour the soul‟. From the lyric, Bert as the singer poetically describes the fear toward something invisible while he has no power to face it. It can be obviously seen from the phrase “he wears his heart safety pinned to his backpack, his backpack is all that he knows” in describing his weakness so that as if he only has the „backpack‟ to protect himself from any destruction. His fear toward the „invisible creature‟ is depicted by the rest of the lyric „shot down by strangers whose glances can cripple the heart and
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by Bert. This fear is a common topic owned by most of young people in facing the adolescence phase.
Next figure is a scene when Bert peeps what happens outside his room through the door hole. He can see that there is an unidentified haunting him (Figure 115). The coming out of this creature is intended to show the realization of fear feeling. Next scene is scene where Bert suddenly drowns in a mysterious deep water inside the chair he sits (Figure 116). Both of these scenes are running together with the instrumental sounds without any lyric heard. The function of this instrumental is intended to strengthen the dramatization of Bert while struggling with his fear problems. All of the visualizations of The Used‟s music videos reflect fear in general suffered by young people. Repeatedly, the comings out of those scenes are intended to strengthen fear impression of being older in the Emo style. Before Emo emerges in the early of 2000s, there is no music exploring dread thing in such way, even Emo in the early of 1980s. However, everything related to the fear seems like a common and popular Emo formula since 9/11 tragedy has happened. American young people can deeply explore their fear in Emo. Similar like the previous phenomenon, the rising of nowadays Emo is used to emphasize the ambient atmosphere post 9/11 with a component of anxiety feeling suffered by common American adolescents. Fear is the most visible thing that America experienced after the tragedy since her symbol of
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a new stage in their life which will be different from the childhood phase. The way the video explore the feeling in Emo style, has change the fear as a legal requirement in this youth subculture. In fact, Emo previously is an underground
youth subculture which faced „fear‟ of getting older in contrast with such vulnerable way by practicing DIY ethic. Overall, The Used‟s music videos show the commodification of Emo by exploiting youth anxiety as the only main theme with the related topic like depression, loneliness, alienations, vulnerability, confuse and the like as a standard image of Emo Kids represented by The Used.
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