All These Things That I've Done

I chose to analyze the Killers’ video for their song, “All These Things That I’ve Done.” I chose this video because it has always been interesting to me. I had to view it a couple times to figure out what exactly is going on. Part of the reason that this video is so confusing is that it’s not linear at all. Most music videos aren’t linear in the first place, but this video takes scenes from a linear story and mixes them up. They then try to give the viewer clues as to what is going on by numbering all of the scenes. That way, when you put the numbers in order, the scenes fall into place as well. In addition to this, the video is confusing because at first, it seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the song at all. It shows the band members in a trailer park dressed as cowboys and being chased by a group of women called “The Killer Sluts” while the message of the song is about taking inventory of your life, seeing things that could be different, and trying to change them. However, the concept of the music video seems to make more sense when this meaning of the song is brought out. The video begins with scene zero, which shows the lead singer lying face down in a puddle after he and the other band members have been beaten by The Killer Sluts. The video then goes into a jumble of other scenes that happened either before or after he lands in the puddle: he cheats on his wife, rides a donkey, lands in the trailer park, etc. After it shows all of these scenes out of order, the video ends with him once again face down in the puddle, this scene now numbered as seven. The fact that the two scenes are the same but numbered differently serve as a warning to the viewer of what would happen if you don’t stop and take inventory of your life or make changes. Everything that went wrong in the past will go wrong in the future: you will make the same mistakes twice if you don’t do anything to stop them from happening. I think that they way that the scenes are jumbled show that the series of events in one’s life doesn’t have to remain static. They’re changeable and movable; just because one’s life starts out one way doesn’t mean it’s changeable. This gives some hope to the video, despite the fact that it begins and ends in the same way.

As for a way of selling the Killers’ music, I think that the video does a good job of intriguing the viewer enough to make him pay attention to the video and the song. The way that the video is jumbled makes viewers want to keep watching it to figure it out. It pulls the viewer in, forcing him to listen to the song and probably get the catchy “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” like stuck in their head, which could propel viewers to buy the music.