Music Video Analysis: Disturbed - Land Of Confusion

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.