What the media shows us?

Isaac Villalobos

The title of this song is “Where is the love by the Black Eyed Peas.” This is a video offers a very interesting introspective look at ourselves. It does this by displaying the negativity that is so prevalent in the media within our society today. This is shown through specific scenes in the video, lyrics as well.

The Black Eyed Peas are an American hip hop group. They released this music video in 2003 and the song premiered on their third album. A major tool that was used in this video was juxtaposing different themes together. We would have a connotation about what is happening but we would be mistaken in different examples in the video. This was in part accomplished by the question mark we see a throughout the video. This acts literally as a sign of questioning as we find out in the video.

The sign here works together with the lyrics “where is the love” to ask that question. This straightforward method allows us to easily tell when the artists want us to see how negative the media can portray things in our society. We can see this negativity by the juxtaposition of the question mark to what is seemingly happening in the video. In one of the most evident examples there are multiple people running through the city in black hoodies looking back as if they were being chased or doing something wrong. However, when we see what is going on they are simply spreading the question of “where is the love”. This in turn also points out the negativity of what we are shown, which may give the idea of crime and delinquency. However, we may not be seeing the whole picture like in the video. This is the most used method in the video and accompanies the lyrics very well.

Another example that occurs happens when one of the men who has been spreading the “question mark” is being chased down by the police. He is eventually captured and this represents what the media shows us. However, we see beforehand that all he was doing was asking “where is the love?” This relates strongly to the lyrics “wrong information always shown by the media negative images is their criteria.” This really encompasses everything that is being said in this video. We only see the negative images in the media, but just because that information is what we see doesn’t mean it is the truth. Even partial images of the truth can be “wrong information” if the whole context isn’t analyzed.