Marshall Bruce Mathers III started performing as a rap artist under the name Eminem and released his first album in 1996. The single Stan was released on May 23rd 2000, which featured singer Dido. It was the third single taken from the album The Marshall Mathers LP recorded in 1999. The video was directed by Phillip Atwell and Dr. Dre and falls in the Hip hop/ Rep genre. The video is a narrative and performance and centers around a fictional obsessive fan called Stanly “Stan” Mitchell who claimed to be Eminem’s biggest fan. Stan starts writing letters to Eminem but they become more and more obsessive and when Stan receives no reply and his anger is heightened, and he ends up sending a voice recording of driving himself into a lake with his pregnant girlfriend in the boot.
Eminem is being represented as an iconic star that is very influential. This is shown in the video when Stan tries to copy Eminem by bleaching his hair blond, shots and copying the way he dresses. The cameras close up emphasize this. We see Stan looking in a long mirror and the reflection shows Eminem performing in front of him, this image has been edited over the mirror. This uses the notion of looking. Eminem is shown as influential as his target audience is 15-25 year old males, of black and white ethnicity of class E to C2. This target group I believe can be targeted quite easily, so the video is giving the message about how stupid, dangerous and out of control obsession can become.
The relationship between the lyrics in the video is both illustrative and amplifying. The first example of the lyrics being illustrative and amplifying is during Eminem’s first lyrics “Dear slim, I wrote to you but you still ain’t callin. I left my cell, my pager and my home phone at the bottom. I sent to letters back in autumn, you must not-a got em.” As this is sung a white with bleached white hair is shown in his basement writing a letter to Eminem, The walls of the basement are shown to be full of pictures of Eminem. The lyrics to the song reflect exactly what Stan is writing and thinking showing his growing obsessive behavior. He calls Eminem just Slim showing Stan thinks he knows him personally because he feels he had a similar childhood and feels his life mirrors Eminem’s. This is show when Eminem sings “I read about your Uncle Ronnie too I’m sorry. I had a friend kill himself over some bitch who didn’t want him.” As he says this there is a mid shot on Stan with a smirk on his face as if he is just trying to find anything in his life that can compare to Eminem’s life. The second example of the lyrics being illustrative and amplifying is when he sings “But you could’ve signed an autograph for Mathew, that’s my little brother man, he’s only 6 years old, we waited in the blistering cold for you, for four hours and you just said no.” As this is sung Stan is shown in the video outside in the snow with his little brother Mathew with just a white t-shirt and baggy trousers, similar to what Eminem would wear, unlike everyone else around him who are all in black coats covered up to stay warm. This shows that Stan will keep imagining what his icon would wear through anything. He stands out in the crowd because of his white t-shirt contrasting with the black coats.
The use of low key lighting creates a disturbing volatile atmosphere. We see a very volatile situation in the introduction when Stan verbally attacks and is very threatening towards his pregnant girlfriend. The editing tempo is slow to start with using slow cuts but when it gets to the third verse in the car the speed of the cuts get faster and quite random. This fits the lyrics as Stan is now out of control and now on depressants. We know this as the lyrics say “I’m on a thousand downers now, I’m drowsy.”
The melody sung by Dido is very important as it emphasizes how unhappy the pregnant woman is, but she tries to convince herself that things are not as bad as they seem. We first see her at the beginning where we see what her relationship with Stan is like. At the start of the video, it is a dark night, thunder, lightning and rain hammering down. The camera focuses on a large open window with the net curtains blowing, the camera zooms in through the window into a dark room lit only by the lightning flashes. The woman is lying on the bed looking sad, and alone. Following a run in with Stan in the bathroom, where she is being rational and he is being irrational. The melody starts, in the lyrics are the words “The morning rain clouds up my window, and I cant see at all. And even if I could it would all be grey.” Shows that she sees no way out of this isolated unhappy life, but to keep herself sane by thinking that things will get better with Stan. The next lines of the lyrics reflect this “Got your picture on my wall it reminds me that it’s not so bad, it’s not so bad.” Dido repeats this melody after every verse.
Post By:
Josh Shea
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