music video analysis

For this video analysis, I chose “When I’m Gone” by Eminem.  There is no real reason as to why I chose this.  I just asked around and this was one of the suggestions I was given.  The song is based around his life and his family.  He tells his daughter that when he is gone he wants her to celebrate him and his life.  He wants her to be happy and smile when she thinks of him.  He does not want her to mourn over his death.

His daughter Hailie does not like that he leaves all the time for shows.  She says that he loves the audience more than his own family.  I like how for every event that he describes or mentions in the song there is a scene that goes right along with it.  It is almost like watching a movie where the characters just sing all the words (not a musical).

It starts out with him at some sort of group counseling meeting and he starts to tell his life story.  He stars out by saying “It’s my life…my own words I guess…”  I feel like this means that we make our own choices and write our own life with those choices.  He goes on talking about how he is and what he has done wrong.  He wants to try and fix what he has messed up. 

There is a part in the video where he is looking into a mirror and then he smashes it.  During this scene he says “all this time I couldn’t see.” He also mentions that is when he wakes up.  I think this resembles when he finally realizes what he has been doing and it upsets him that he has hurt his family so much.  He then goes to his family and hugs them and it makes his daughter smile.

The fact of his daughter Hailie being in the video, doing all the things he mentions really makes it real.  You see how upset she is at times or how happy she is when he is there.  The part where she says she bought him a coin that says number one day and she wanted to give it to him.  The way they show this in the video shows you all the expressions.  She throws the coin at him on stage after she says that.  I think that really shows her emotion.