Produced by Interscope Records, The Black Eyed Peas' song and video "Where Is The Love?" has garnered much attention for the messages that it portrays. The music video starts out with a prevalent theme of a question mark being posted all over the city. At first, it is hard to tell why the people are posting question marks all around. But as the video progresses, you see images of violence on the television, which would then cut to a picture of the same question mark that shows up throughout the video. There is also an incident where a member of the group posting the tags is arrested, and is explaining his actions (through rap) to the officer. At the end of the video, people from varying ages come outside to stand on the sidewalk while looking up at the sky, as the words "We only got/one world, one world/That's all we got/One world, one world".
This music video portrays many themes that have the audience think about their own selves and the how people are in the world. The first thing that the audience should notice is the setting. The video takes place during the day, where people are all about, driving, walking, and playing outside. Without trying to, the group is running around posting signs of question marks all over the place, showing that though vandalism is illegal, they disregard the rules in order to preach what they believe. Their message: where is the love. Throughout the video, violence is a reoccurring motif that seems to affect everyone in the video, regardless of age. For example, children are playing a game called Postal 2 that caused as much controversy as the first Postal did, as the Postal games are known for the unsolicited violence that the player can inflict on anything the player wants to. The appearance of the game makes as statement against violence when it cuts to a question mark, making the audience question games like Postal, especially when children are playing. The produces invoke a sort of emotion that makes you think of how people like children and adults alike are exposed to the senseless violence, from games to war, and how it becomes a normalized concept of society as we are constantly exposed to it. In a way, not only does the producers point out the senseless violence, but also comments on the lack of action to stop the violence.
A second theme of the music video is the arrest of one of the protesters. He was caught, and taken down very violently, yet is still adamant of spreading his message to even the police that have detained him. His facial expressions show the passion of his message, as he is also raps/tells the officer his angst and reason of why he did what he did. In reading the lyrics, you see that he is concerned with children as "Negative images [are] the main criteria/Infecting the young minds faster than bacteria/Kids wanna act like what they see in the cinema.../whatever happened to the values of humanity" and so-on. The commentary is also reflected by the images of various children from all ethnic backgrounds, making you feel a sense of sadness with the words "where is the love" in the background.
The whole music video is very well put together in the sense that it invokes a strong emotion that makes the audience really question the morality and unity of issues like the broadcasting/invention of violence that people are exposed to everyday. Rather than showing the audience explicit violence, it shows us a way to fix it by not going along with the violence, but protesting it by coming together and supporting each other.
Moral of the video: make love, not war.
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