Music Video Analysis (Beat it Music, Micheal Jackson)

Background

The song is written and sung by American Michael Jackson. The purpose of the music video is to of course promote the artist as is the case with most music all time chart. It reached number 3 in the UK singles chart. Unlike most of Michael Jackson songs which are of the pop genre, this one is of the rock- pop genre and acts as a hybrid.

Type of Music Video

It a performance and a narrative. The performance element is intercut with the shot related to the story  showing the artist singing, whilst there is a gang war takes place in a old sryle American dinner. The gang war is stopped by the singing and dancing of the artist and the violence stops. This shows that the artist is trying to make the statement that music and dance have the ability to cease violence. 

Genre Characteristics
There are several characteristics of the pop and rock genre. Firstly, the lighting is dark with out any other colours apart from the clothes people are wearing. This is for the purpose of verisimilitude because it is set at night, but it gives it the feel of rock than pop. The fact that it is set at night adds to this. The performance element, is converging to the stereotypical pop music video as most videos in this genre do contain singing and dancing. The costumes are definitely a match for the rock genre, with the tatty jeans, dark black clothes aren’t things you would probably find in a pop video but if it was in a rock video it would be no surprise. The narrative is something that is more common of the pop genre, is when problems are sorted through activities like sing and dance. Which happens a lot in pop videos. All these things clearly show it as a mix of the genres.

Relationship between Visuals and Lyrics
The visuals are not a direct portrayal of the lyrics but they are a close  match. The lyrics set out set out a scene were somebody is trying to act "hard", and this ends up in a fight, and the song is trying to warn the antagonist to fight and that one is imminent. The visuals are set in the future during the fight. The lyrics are the back story to these visuals.   
The music is edited in time with the lyrics. The music gradually picks up  speed as time goes on and each shot time begins to increase in speed. This means that as the music gets faster  as does the pace of the edit. Another bit of relationship between the visuals and the music is when the instrumental section kicks in, so does the fight. When the lyrics resume the fight is ended. This helps to show the story in a clearer light. This being that singing and dancing that solves the problem.

Intertextuality
The entire plot of the music video is traditional of most American Gangster films. The fact that it is set in a diner, and gangs are at war with each other is the stereotypical plot of one of these films. The entire music video is a lot like Broadway Musical ‘West Side Story’ as there are two gangs fighting.