Director Background
Chris Cunningham is an English music video film director and video artist, who was essentially catapulted into stardom after directing Aphex Twin’s 1997 electro-industrial hit “Come to Daddy”. Cunningham’s career began with his work on the 1994 film version of Judge Dredd, helping him to get noticed and consequently head-hunted by Stanley Kubrick for the role of designing and supervising tests of the central character in his version of the film “A.I”, which he worked on for over a year before leaving to pursue a career as a director. Cunningham directed his first music video for Autechre’s “Second Bad Vilbel” in 1995, and then went on to direct videos for Squarepusher, Aphex Twin with “Come to Daddy” and “Windowlicker”, Bjork’s “All Is Full of Love”, which won multiple awards and can now be seen at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, as well as directing a music video for “Frozen” by Madonna. Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) is quoted on Wikipedia as saying “Come to Daddy came about while I was just hanging around my house, getting pissed and doing this crappy death metal jingle. Then it got marketed and a video was made, and this little idea that I had, which was a joke, turned into something huge. It wasn’t right at all.” Cunningham himself, in an interview with Pitchfork, remarked that “When we were making it I didn't know it was going to work that well. You can't tell; it's the nature of filmmaking: No matter how much you plan or figure out how it's going to work, it's so dependent on luck.”
Artist, Song & Genre
Aphex Twin has been described as "The most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music." A recurring argument between electronic/ambient fans is the case of "Who's better - Aphex Twin or Deadmau5?" An Aphex Twin rhythm can consist of anything from nearly complete ambiance, to complex, mathematical poly-rhythmic break-beats, and while his pieces may not be as accessible as Deadmau5's catchy, club-lenient songs, there's no argument as to who is more experimental, and who is pushing the boundaries of electronica.
IDM is a term which stands for Intelligent Dance Music, which grew out of an experimental electronic age when artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre were producing mathematically-driven, complex beats. The term has naturally became a source of controversy among electronic fans, as what can really be classified as intelligent music? Does this render and imply others of the genre unintelligent? Who gets to decide who the term describes? Aphex Twin himself is quoted in '97, as saying "I just think it's really funny to have terms like that. It's basically saying, 'this is intelligent and everything else is stupid.' It's really nasty to everyone else's music. (laughs) It makes me laugh, things like that. I don't use names. I just say that I like something or I don't."
Audience
Aphex Twin's target audience (whilst being rather diverse) primarily consists of young males in their late teens/early 20s, and he has developed somewhat of an incredible cult following in online culture and has undeniably been a massive influence to the genre. One of the key elements of Aphex Twin's success, is that people quite literally all over the world can listen to him. Although his lyrics are nearly always in English, the dark, ambient beats he produces can be appreciated the world over, whether you are familiar with the language or not.
His hits may not be that popular on mainstream radio, however they have done the rounds virally and are recognised as the face of electronica in this modern era. He is quoted as saying "It started off at a club called Disobey, around the corner from where I live", so he naturally gained a following from the area where he started off.
The Youtube video for this music video has hit 8 million hits since 2006, and has been featured on SBNation.com.
Style
To analyse a music video and categorise it as performance, abstract, narrative, or possibly a hybrid of a multiple of these three pure forms, we must first define the forms themselves. Performance is by far the most popular of the three forms (as viewable on multiple music channels such as MTV), primarily consisting of the artist performing the song in one or more settings. This setting is conventionally confined to a recording studio/rehearsal room, however it can quite literally be located anywhere. Certain genres of music have their particular conventions and clichés; for example, rap videos are known to consist of the artist walking down the street, and RnB songs typically have an overcrowded club scene with flashing lights. Performance itself can be broken down into three further sub-categories of music video: song performance, dance performance and instrumental performance. Performance music videos almost always consist of song performance, and are often a hybrid of song and dance (as frequently observable in Michael Jackson’s videos) or song and instrumental (as viewable in Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”). Arguably, concert songs are also performance, however due to the popularity of this form it has its own genre – the gig video (Talking Heads are a notable band when discussing this form, in particular their concert-film “Stop Making Sense”).
A narrative music video is essentially just that, a short film played to a musical piece relating to the lyrics. There are however, pure and non-pure narrative videos. Pure narrative music videos would consist of no sound apart from the musical piece, from start to finish. Whereas a non-pure narrative video would incorporate some sounds from the narrative clips, for example the artist lip-syncing to the song or a car driving past, typically used to draw you into the location of the shot.
Abstract is slightly harder to define. The Oxford dictionary define abstract as “based on general ideas and not on any particular real person, thing or situation”. Disjunction music videos are completely abstract and have no clear link or relevance to any elements of the video, from lyrics to the artist themselves. Radiohead are a particularly notable band, notorious for their abstract music videos.
Come to Daddy’s music video rejects nearly all elements of performance form. The song’s few lyrics “Come to Daddy” and “I want/will eat your soul” are however repeated in a ritualistic manner , sometimes being lip-synced by the devilish leader inside a television set carried by one of the demonic androgynous child-sized clones of James. Although it is far from a conventional example, Come to Daddy is a narrative music video, although it has barely any lyrics to synchronise or relate to.
Textual Analysis
The film opens to several handheld, low-angle, dimly-lit, quick cuts (including an establishing shot) of a tower block located inside an industrial complex, ending in a vertical tilt depicting an old lady walking her dog across the complex. The camera then cuts to a shot-reverse-shot, starting with a low-angle shot of the woman walking her dog towards an overturned shopping trolley, then cutting to a rotating pan in on a television screen (which is part of the discarded items near the trolley), suggesting that it harbours some importance in the narrative, before cutting back to her again. As her dog sniffs around the various items to eerie, ominous music, the camera cuts to a long shot from behind the woman and her dog. During this second-long shot, a shadow slightly moves on the left side of the screen, which the viewer would be more inclined to notice due to its synchronisation with a new sound in the song, which returns to its ominous sound directly afterwards. The woman then turns around to scan the area, but the shadow has already moved and she is pulled back by her dog. After the dog relieves itself, the television screen flickers and an electric shock hits the dog as a flickering/electrical sound can be heard over the main audio track. This attention to the detail of synchronisation perfectly depicts how important the audio is to the video’s narrative, at the same time creating audio for a wholly non-diegetic opening. There are then a lot of quick, close-up cuts between the woman’s increasingly tight grip on the leash of the dog, the dog barking repeatedly in attempts to attack the television, and the increasing flickering of the television as a distorted version of Richard D. James’ face comes into focus, lip-syncing the first line of the song: “I want your soul.”, the sound of television static hovering over the track as the introduction to the song ends.
The woman releases the dog, and then proceeds to stagger around the estate/complex, eventually happening upon a horde of demonic child with Richard D. James’ (the Aphex Twin) face superimposed onto theirs. This is very common among his videos; his face is often superimposed onto others. The build-up eventually leads up to the beat dropping as these children run past the old woman and terrorise the estate, with no indication of purpose. There are then a lot of quick cuts between the children running, attacking random objects, and close/extreme close-ups of Richard D. James’ face on the television , lip-syncing to the lyrics “Come to Daddy”, which the children eventually do, as one of them picks the television up and they continue on their rampage.
The next “scene” is of them chasing a man into his van to some quick handheld cuts, creating an impression of tension and making the video appear more fast-paced. The tone of the video then does a complete 180, the electronic beats come to a sudden halt and the terrorisation stops as two of the children emerge from the darkness of the complex, skipping to non-diegetic soft piano music. This scene is a huge juxtaposition which I believe was incorporated to make the viewer feel uneasy and confused, (the music and terrorising starts just as instantaneously as it stopped) much like the spacial awareness issue earlier on in the video.
This is followed by a medium-shot of the television rapidly lighting on and off as the unexpectedly tall, demonic creature crawls out of the television and looms over the old woman, screaming. The music hear syncs up with the video again, with a non-diegetic noise which sounds a lot like how the creature would scream, if we could hear the diegetic noises.
The camera then cuts to a long shot of the creature and the children enshrouded in fog, almost huddling together, much like how children would swarm to a real parent. These long shots are used to allow the viewer to take in what is actually happening. The video ends to more quick cuts between all the characters in the film, creating an uneasy feeling within the viewer which might relate them to panic due to all the quick cuts/electronic music/flashing lights.
Production Trivia
The film was shot on the same council estate where Stanley Kubrick shot many scenes in one of his films, A Clockwork Orange. It is unclear as to whether Cunningham selected this location due to his relationship with Kubrick, although it is likely that there is a correlation between the two events.
