Music Video Comparison

The 2 music video's I am comparing are the 2005 release of Korn's “Twisted Transistor” and Limp Bizkits “Eat you alive” released in 2003. Both songs are of the New Metal genre but have very different characteristics to them. Both bands have a long history with each other, doing collaborations for songs and touring together.

The “Twisted Transistor” video involves parody's of the members of the band where four rappers play the parts of Korn. Lil Jon as singer Jonathan Davis, Xzibit as bass player Fieldy, David Banner as drummer David Silveria, and Snoop Dogg as guitarist Munky. It is basically a mockumentary of the band on tour and through there history, similar to that of the film Spinal Tap, it is therefore in the genre of comedy. The video for “Eat you alive” has the plot that Fred Durst (singer) and the rest of his band has kidnapped a girl to show them a live performance where Fred can display his feelings to the girl. The girl is played by Thora Birch, and throughout the video there are cuts between the 2 scenes of the band performing to Birch and a group trying to find her. This group is led by Bill Paxton, his part in the video leads you to believe that he is the girls father. The video takes place in a forest where Durst and his crew have set up a performance area complete with lights and with Paxton's group running through the woods.

There is a lot of intertextuality references in the “Twisted Transistor” video, at the end of the video the real members of Korn represent “Fony Music” a twist on the massive record label “Sony Music” There is also mentions of the extreme sports competition “X-games” in the write up's of the bands future activities at the end of the music video. There is however not much intertextuality in the Limp Bizkit video, the only thing you can really say is there are the signature moves from the band seen in all there other music video's, such as the way they dance and perform the song.

Throughout the video for “Eat you alive” there is a constant feel of voyeurism with the audience feeling like they are the one's being performed to as you take on the role of the girl in the video. Fred Durst talks to the girl Thora at the start of the video saying things like “your gonna love this” but you dont see much of her reactions, you just see Fred talking as if he were talking directly to you the audience. Another example of this is that the camera is constantly moving to simulate the movements of the girls head to follow Fred Durst and to be slightly shaken up by the situation. With the video for “Twisted Transistor” there is a different sense of voyeurism, as you see it in the normal way like a documentary rather than in someone's perspective. The audience for this video feels like they have a front row seat for all the parody of Korn's antics, as they are on tour smashing up hotel rooms, making a music video and recording a song in the studio.

In both videos there is a heavy relationship between the music and the visuals as you see both bands performing the songs in real time. The Limp Bizkit video is a lot more performance orientated though as the whole point of the video is the band performing to a girl as Fred tries to win her over. In Korn's video there are snippets of them performing the song in various different places, in the studio, at a concert, on set of there music video and at the record label meeting. In both video's there is the typical rockstar behaviour that you would expect from both bands in this genre. The “Twisted Transistor” video obviously puts a different spin on that by having Rap stars play the part of Korn but get up to the same antics that the real Korn members would get up to on tour. There is the same relationship between lyrics and visuals that there are between music and visuals as you see the singers sing the words to the songs as they are performing them, in the “Eat you alive” video they have more meaning though as you feel they are being said to you in a personal manner rather than them just be performed to you in the typical way that you would expect if you went to see the band perform live.

Twisted Transistor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBEs5AuO8p0

Eat you alive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQloh2Vozhw