Post Modern Music video Analysis

Kanye West - Stronger

• One main factor that creates a sense of postmodernism in this video is the intertextual references to other forms of media. For example, using special computer effects to create more modern scenes, “a hyper reality” that relate to a Japanese Manga “Akira” released in 1988. All the similarities between the music video and the manga create a narrative throughout the video.

Akira / Stronger

Kanye is representing the character in the film Tetsuo. First he is in a lab in some massive machine.

This is the shot of the motorbike speeding down the streets of Tokyo with light trails following behind.

This shows citizens of Tokyo rioting.

Despite the change in camera angle this scene has been recreated almost perfectly, with the nurse in the exact same position.

Here it shows Kanye/Tetsuo writhing in pain in the hospital bed, clearly in agony.

Several riot police wearing almost exactly the same uniforms as well as gas masks.

In this shot Kanye uses superhuman powers to eliminate the police.

In addition to this the backing of the song is the well known dance song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk. Daft Punk play a role in this video as people operating the machinery that Kanye is in. The prescence of these two on the song is post modernistic as it relates to popular culture and two musical legends from an earlier era.