"Where is the Love" MV Critique

By Jonathan Motes

“Where is the love?” is a music video for the song of the same name performed by The Black Eyed Peas and produced by Interscope Records. The music video depicts the lead performers partaking in an awareness campaign to draw attention to the excessive amount of prejudice and hate throughout the world. The video employs the use of repeated symbolism and imagery tightly combined with poignant lyrics to convey a valuable message of love and hate, all of which come together to form a very solid music video.

As the music video starts, we’re introduced to what quickly becomes a recurring symbol throughout the video: the image of a boxed question mark. Throughout the video, we see the performers, as well as others, spread the symbol throughout the city, posting it on walls, signs, and even on other people. It eventually becomes so pervasive that the symbol appears in crop fields. 

The message the symbol is trying to send is clear; the question mark is meant to symbolize the question “where is the love?” More specifically, as the lyrics elaborate, it raises the question of where the love for others has gone, especially the love for those different from yourself: “But if you only have love for your own race Then you only leave space to discriminate And to discriminate only generates hate And when you hate then you're bound to get irate, yeah.” As the lyrics bring to bear, even within our supposedly peaceful society, we suffer from large amounts of discrimination. By having only “love for your own race,” people continue to promote discrimination and generate hate and discord throughout the world.

As the video continues and moves into the song’s chorus, we are presented with numerous images of poor children singing along with the lyrics: “People killin', people dyin' Children hurt can you hear them cryin'? Can you practice what you preach? And would you turn the other cheek? Father, Father, Father help us Send us some guidance from above 'Cause people got me, got me questionin' Where is the love?” 

The combination of lyrics with imagery works especially well here, as the innocent, saddened looks of the children strongly conveys the troubled message of the lyrics associated with them. Seeing these poor children singing of “questionin’ where is the love?” evokes a genuine feeling of sympathy from the viewer for how much these people are suffering.

The last scene in the video before the final reprise of the chorus depicts an African American man being chased down and apprehended by the police, which is strongly implied to be an act of discriminate. Throughout this, we see the man vent to the police officers of the unfair treatment and questioning what happened to equality in the world, once again tying back to the original question of “where is the love?” The video ends on the powerful note that we only have “one world” to share, and that we have to get along in order to survive. The message is clear and conveyed well through the strong blend of images and lyrics, and as such, this music video finds success.