Disturbed –
Land of Confusion
This music video’s storyline is based around an opinion of
modern day politics and how the world is run. It shows a government and worlds
leaders are in a group round a table with a symbol on, representing the group
they are. The flags of these countries are shown here: USA, Russia, Great
Britain, Japan and France. The group leader, who we find out the identity of
later in the video, is a fat man, who is shown as the person controlling the
presidents and prime ministers of the richest countries in the world.
At the start of the video, we see a human with an evil face
fly through space and crash into the earth. We then see army’s of the world
leaders marching and planes bearing the symbol of the unseen leader bombing a
desert with an oil refinery there, we then see tanks and other aircraft
destroying the world as we see it. The monster that we saw had been imprisoned,
possibly on the basis that he knew the truth and the unseen leader needed him
to be kept away from the public. We see him break out of his chains. The world
leaders are now frantic and worrying.
The monster is then seen to be walking freely through
streets but the army is on the way. More destruction happens and the army
catches up with the monster, and they have tanks and guns all pointing at him.
He then raises his fist in the air and people rush out from buildings and under
the ground to unite behind him, to form the monsters army. There is then a
street fight of rebels vs. the leader army to show the people know the truth
and are not happy about it, and they want society to be a fairer place not run
by a dictator. We then see the fat unseen leader smile with joy at the chaos.
It then goes into a flash back of before the war started,
before the bombings and the unseen leader took over. You then see the monster’s
army walk through some destroyed streets to a building. The building is full of
politicians and the world leaders. The monster just smiles as the public runs
past him and attacks them. The monster then moves on to another room that has
the unseen leader in. Again the mass of public runs past the monster, but there
is a large size difference, I think the difference in size represents the
difference in wealth between them both. The unseen leader is much larger than
the public army. But the public army still wrestle the fat man down. The
monster then climes onto his chest and puts his fists together and a blue flame
comes out, he then flys up into space and back down to earth and lands in the
heart of the unseen leader, the unseen leader then explodes into money,
showering everything.
We then see that the city has been rebuilt and the new
leader is the monster. The song ends with the crowd throwing their fists in the
air.
Voyeurism: The
pleasure of looking at the band members.
There isn’t any true voyeurism in this video, as the actual
band members aren’t in the video at all. The video itself is an animation about
government and politics in the modern day. The main character, a monster has a chiselled
six pack and on the whole bares his muscles. This monster has appeared on
covers of albums and in other music videos. The monster looks human but has a
demons head, perhaps he was human at some point but the way that society is has
corrupted his mind, showing how corrupt society is to everybody.
Selling the artist:
The artists aren’t actually in the video, but you get the
impression from the video that the artist believes in teamwork and fairness
between people and countries. I think the artist is sold to the audience by
singing a song about the ‘Land of Confusion’, which is our land, our Earth. It
makes us think does this video relate to real life? In my opinion yes it does
in some aspects, e.g. the world leaders have the money and could be hiding
things from society to cover their tracks. So the artist talks about real life
problems with an abstract twist, the monster is seen as rough, wearing a hood
and rags, this can give off the effect that you don’t need wealth and riches to
control your life, or to be a powerful figure in society... But you do need
super powers.
Intertextuality:
The message brought off by the video is similar to a line in
the film ‘V for Vendetta’ – “People should not be afraid
of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people”. Also from
the film, it only took 1 man to stand up against the power to show that there
is another way forward, to break the dictatorship on how we are expected behave
in modern society. In the music video, it took 1 man, first seen as a monster
or a terrorist but then seen as a figure that crushes the evil that we all know
exists but can’t do anything about, just like in the film ‘V for Vendetta’.
Also when the monster figure is walking through
the trashed streets a letter ‘S’ signifying ‘Superman’ landed on his chest
being blown by wind, he then looks down and throws it away showing that he is
just a man standing up for what he believes is right and shouldn’t get any
special treatment.
The unseen leader character looks a bit like ‘The
Penguin’ out of the ‘Batman’ films, I don’t know if it is deliberate but his
appearance has many of the same features.
Lyrics/ Visuals:
In this video most of the time the lyrics match up to the video.
For example: ‘Oh Superman, where are you now?’ – When this happens, a letter S
flies into the chest of the monster to show that superman is here in the form
of the monster.
‘The men of steel, these men of power, are losing control by the
hour’ – in the video, it shows the world leaders frantically shouting at each
other looking for answers.
‘There’s too many men, too many people making too many problems’ –
bombs were being dropped on cities by planes of the leaders’ army.
‘And there’s not much love to go around’ – in the video it shows
cities around the world in ruin.
This entire verse of the song is played twice, firstly when the
people’s army are arming up with poles ready to fight against the leaders’ army
and again when the monster’s hands are glowing with a blue flame: ‘Now this is
the world we live in, and these are the hands we’re given, stand up and lets
start trying, to make it a place worth fighting for’.
So the artists have tried very hard to keep the video relevant to
every line. The only time when a vast amount of time isn’t related is when the
flash back sequence is happening it shows the start of the video in reverse to
show what the city was like before all of the wars and corruption began. This
is relevant to the lyrics but not line by line like the majority of the song.
Music / Visuals:
The music itself is heavy sounding using a mix of lead & bass
guitars, drums and electric piano. The tone of the music is fairly major with a
mix of minor parts for some of the more depressing lyrics. It is mainly major
because the song is about pulling yourself together to do a great thing, sort
of like a confidence speech that you have before playing a team sport or
starting a war, in affect the song is meant to raise the moral of the monster’s
army so they can beat the unseen leader to claim back the land which is
rightfully theirs. The tempo of the music is fast which means when you hear it
you will have an increased heart rate. The faster heart rate ties in with the
war shown in the video and the other violence shown.
Genre
The genre of Disturbed – Land of Confusion is hard rock / heavy
metal. Metal videos are often abstract or show less of the band members or have
other themes involved with their music videos. If you see the actual artist
playing in heavy metal music videos you often see them playing guitars. If the
tempo is fast, then you see the artists thrashing wildly at their guitars to
show their passion for their music, however if the tempo is slow, they are more
delicate and sing with pain, when it is a slow tempo it is often in a minor key
and about a depressing subject. ‘Land of Confusion’ is different as there
aren’t any instruments or band members shown in the video, but it is still easily
identifiable to be a heavy metal / hard rock song. The clothing worn by band
members is often casual and dark colours, depending on the key. The monster’s
clothing is very minimal, torn rags and a chain from the prison where he broke
out from, which helps reinforce the genre of heavy metal.
