Theater Type Music Videos
Stromae
I use Stromae a lot when I dissect the relatioinship between song and video in music videos to find the resulting text of both. When we watch music videos in our native languages, we take in both at the same time. By using a French song, I'm able to read into the story the video presents without the understanding of the lyris to influence my experience.
At first glance, the music video seems to be about bisexuality or gender fluidity, such as Stromae seems to be playing both a woman and man by having a split appearance so that when you see him from one side, you see one expression, and the other expression from the other side. However, when learning the meaning of the lyrics, it’s actually about the troubles between a couple having problems and Stromae is simply singing all parts. This is important as the title “Tous Les Memes” is translated to “All the Same”, such as “we’re all the same” rather than having inherent differences between the genders, further exemplified by his performance in both roles. The two characters are the same. They are two sides of a coin, two sides of Stromae. The man and woman both have their problems but it is not because they are inherently different by being a man and woman.
An added layer of text is the subtle stab at gender within the French language. In French, articles like “a” or “the” are changed by the thing they’re about, being considered feminine or masculine. If talking about a group of women, “the” is “las”, and a group of men is “les”, but when talking about a group of people that includes men and women, the masculine form is used which can mislead people into thinking that the title is about men. It’s also a call to when women say something akin to “oh you men, you’re all the same” but as the song goes on, we see that the same mentality is applied from men to women, and because both sides do it, both sides are also the same.