Analysis - Eminem - by Josh

Since the lyrics in this song were quite literal, it fitted perfectly as a narrative video. Also it was quite long for a music video, this being 8 minutes long whereas normally they range from 3 minutes to 5. It was nominated for a number of awards including: Video of the Year, Best Rap Video and Best Cinematography, but only won Best International Artist video. This is clearly a very popular music video, having been nominated for so many awards, the namesake of the song gave rise to an internet slang term for an overzealous, maniacal obsessed fan over a celebrity, which is shown throughout the video. A lot of the music video's lyrics and images are censored because of the dark, menacing nature of the song.

 The video tells the story of a over-obsessed fan of Eminem, who writes letters to his idol in the hope that he would write back to him. He eventually drives his car with his pregnant girlfriend off a bridge, killing them both. The video starts without music for about a minute which shows the girlfriend (who is played by Dido) of the protagonist (Stan/ley)lying on a bed while thunder and rain pour down outside, the sound of which is heard throughout the non-music section of the video. She gets up from the bed while picking up a jumper, where the video then cuts to Stan in a bathroom pouring liquid onto his hair. Looking in the mirror, he smiles to see that his hair has bleached blonde, the same colour as Eminem's (image right).

 His girlfriend bangs on the door asking him to let her in to which he does nothing and just continues to stare at himself in the mirror. A bird's eye view of the bathroom and hallway show the squalor of the home; poorly lit shadeless lights highlight the dirty, disheveled walls and bathroom floor, hardly a good place for a child to live in (image below).

 He eventually lets her in but scares her by shouting 'What?' at her, to which she looks in horror at the sink and his hair, saying 'Stanley, what are you doing to yourself?'. This perhaps indicates that she is aware of his weak personality and is worried about what he is becoming. He responds: 'What, the hair, you don't like it?' and continues to gaze in the mirror, until his girlfriend's cries of 'Stanley' provoke him to turn around and shout at her again: 'Don't, call me, that, okay?', him referring to his own name as 'that' clearly show his dislike at being called by something he no longer wants to be known as, which could reflect on him already beginning to lose sense of who he is. The dying of his hair is clearly him trying to look like Eminem, being so obsessed with him. He ignores her saying 'Don't you think you're taking this too far?', lifts the toilet seat and rushes out the door, slamming it on the way out. His girlfriend's last cry of 'Stanley' is emphasised by a clap of thunder and the song starts at the sound of the door slamming. The thunder could signify how Stan's girlfriend is already starting to lose sense of who he is and doesn't understand him anymore.

Lyrics
 There is a large emphasis on the lyrics in this video and the whole video is built around them,  The opening lyrics of the first verse are "Dear Slim, I wrote to you" and at this point we see Stan, the main character of the video, writing a letter to Eminem whilst referring to him as 'Slim', Eminem's nick name - here Stan is talking to him as if Eminem is his friend, perhaps showing an emotional bond Stan has for his idol. Throughout the song Eminem is trying to convey how fans can become too attached to their favourite artists and role models, through doing so they do not attend to the things they should be doing, e.g. Stan should be looking after his heavily pregnant girlfriend but instead: "We waited in the blistering cold for you for four hours and you just said no", which is linked with when Stan is speaking into a tape recorder: "Dear Mister-I'm-Too-Good-To-Call-Or-Write-My-Fans",Stan is beginning to lose faith in Eminem writing back to him. However later in the video when Eminem writes back to Stan it reveals how he tried to write him and his brother an autograph but wasn't able to, being rushed away by security.

Music
 Despite the video not always making a connection through cuts with the beat of the music, it still retains a large use of transition pacing, keeping in tempo with the song and setting the mood. In fact there are a lot of fast paced transitions when Stan's anger starts to build up, especially when he is in the car hurtling towards the bridge, at which point some of the transitions are barely a second long compared to the start of the video where the shots are drawn out and move about a lot more. What perhaps sets this apart from other videos is that there are no instruments present, perhaps because a lot of the music is percussion based and doesn't feature the typical instruments used in music videos such as guitars or bass. This is also probably due to the video being completely narrative as well as the fact that most rap videos do not feature instruments; there are no guitar solos or any distinctive, impressionable sections that are focused on any one instrument, the main focus being the artists' lyrics, as the video is based around these.

Intertextual References
 Stan makes a few references to Eminem in his letters, further establishing his love for Eminem, most notably perhaps: "If I have a daughter, guess what I'ma call her? I'ma name her Bonnie", in reference to his song 'Bonnie and Clyde 97', to which Eminem replies "I'm really flattered you would call your daughter that". Stan also mentions how he "read about your Uncle Ronnie too I'm sorry
I had a friend kill himself over some bitch who didn't want him" in an attempt to relate to Eminem and show how alike they are. Another interesting reference is that t Phil Collin's song: "You know the song by Phil Collins, 'In the Air of the Night' about that guy who coulda saved that other guy from drowning but didn't, then Phil saw it all, then at at a show he found him? That's kinda how this is, you coulda rescued me from drowning". This also relates to how Stan and his girlfriend drown at the end of the video, perhaps Stan was influenced by this song to take his girlfriend's and his own life by drowning.

 This video became an important promotional item for Eminem, as well as the use of a more Pop genre centered artist (Dido) helped expand his target audience.