Demons Inside
My paper is a rhetorical analysis is over a music video by five finger death punch. This video was released on June 15th, 2015 part of the Got Your Six album. Five Finger Death Punch is a heavy metal base genre. The genre itself developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. Heavy metal lyrics and performance styles are often associated with masculinity, aggression, and machismo (Walser 2016).. This text makes meaning by stating everyone has a demon inside meaning that everyone has dark thoughts or deeds and that no one is innocent.
The song was formed from a voice mail left at 2:30AM by lead vocalist Ivan L. Moody to guitarist Jason
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Hook. Hook made the voice mail into a song, which was well received by the other members of the band. I am going to be doing a visual analysis over the music video itself like what the band members are wearing and doing in the music video. Then I will do rhetorical analysis on the lyrics themselves and use pathos, ethos, and logos to help me accomplish that (James 2015). The song starts out “Their just so much God damned weight on my shoulders all I’m trying to do is live my mother****ing life” (Mattfield 2015). These lyrics can be referred to multiple meanings but I think it means that the pressure of people telling you what to do and letting you be yourself. As in video their manager wants them to put out another music video put the band had already told him they were done with videos. In response to being forced to do it they dress as ridiculous as possible to get back at him. The next line of the song goes “Supposed to be happy, but I’m always getting colder wear a smile on my face but there is a demon inside” (Mattfield 2015). This line goes a little deeper because it conveys a sad but true reality that the real world faces. This has been shown in many cases but one that was recent was a you tuber named Daniel Kyre committed suicide. He applies to this very well because according to his friends and family his career had just taken off and everyone said he seemed so happy. This shows even people with great success have demons inside but will smile on the inside so they do not affect the people around them. As song goes it repeats those lyrics above for short bit then it goes. “The story getting old and my heart is getting colder” (Mattfield 2015). The way I interpret this is that the person is getting tired of hearing the same old sob story over and over. Also by saying his heart is getting colder is meaning he or she has less sympathy or does not care about the feelings of others and becomes more self-centered. Before we go into this next line of the song I’m going to explain the story of Jekyll and Hyde. The plot of this story is the Jekyll and Hyde is the same person but the way both characters act are the complete opposite. They are opposite because Jekyll is a very nice well-dressed modest individual then a have Hyde a raging psychopath that kills anyone in his way in cold blood. This goes deeper because Jekyll cannot control the transformations due to ingesting an experimental chemical but the irony of this is Hyde is a reflection of Jekyll’s inner feelings and this is why Hyde goes on these rampages and kills these people and in reality Jekyll wants them dead but Hyde gets the bad reputation for it. Due to that he believes he will become Hyde permanently if that happens he will be hunted down and killed. In the end Jekyll ends up committing suicide due to the fact he has now run out of the antidote to reverse the effects. After explaining the story of Jekyll and Hyde I can continue on to the next part of the song the lyrics are “I just wanna be Jekyll, but I'm always fighting Hyde” (Mattfield 2015). The meaning of this line is that even though people want to be Jekyll aka the good guy and they want hide their inner emotions but cannot do that. The second part is the people are fighting their true feelings which Hyde represents those dark thoughts that the people have inside them. As the song continues it keeps talking about your inner feelings which brings us to the next lyric which is “You’ve got rocks in your head, I can hear them rolling ‘round” (Mattfield 2015). This in my opinion means that the rocks represent bad thoughts inside the persons mind such as murder, stealing, and kidnapping etc. Generally most of the people in the world have experienced these rocks in their mind and get can be from bullying or just general hatred towards that one person. The part of the lyrics rolling round in my opinion can interpret two different ways. The first reference that comes to mind for me is I think of the snowball effect were the little ball of snow turns into a boulder and the size of these rocks represent how big the persons emotions are in their head say example someone mistreats you and for a rock of emotion in your head then that person does something worse and that rock gets even bigger. The second interpretation I get is that the rocks are someone’s commitment to do something like the rocks symbolizes the rock rolling to one side saying I should do it or sway to the other side saying I shouldn’t do it. Now getting towards the end of the lyrics the line really applies to the ones who don’t think they need help. The lyrics are “You can say you’re above it, but you’re always falling down” This to me is a very important because people think they can handle everything themselves when they really cannot. By the song saying you can say you’re above it to me means that people think they are above the problems surrounding them this can lead to people not sharing this pertinent information because they do not want to affect their lives. The second part ties into the reality of these people’s lives because people do not want to admit their problems even though the ones around them can see their lives going downhill and the those people will not accept help. The last not repetitive lyric in the song “Is there a method to your madness? Is it all about pride?” To me is there a method to your madness is asking why the people have changed and what is the reason for going in a downwards depression. The second part is saying that sometimes people let their pride get in the way of what is right because they do not want to seem weak in front of all their associates. We are now moving on to the visual analysis of the song which includes the music video. The first scene of the music video shows Ivan the lead singer right now and he looks normal surrounded by some very nice stuff. He is also wearing Napoleon Dynamite which can show that the band is not always a real serious cut throat band all the time and know they can use Napoleon as that weird/have fun symbol and with beer I’d say a good chuck of the population in the U.S enjoys cracking a cold one and a baseball bat beside him symbolizing Americas past time. This scene can now relate to Napoleon fans along baseball fans and beer drinkers. The final piece that can build a relation between the audience member and the video is that some people may be nude art fanatics. The second scene of the video shows fire finger death punch member Chris Kael knitting a baby sock of all things. This is different from the first scene because there are a lot of average household items in this scene unlike the first one. Some the items in the scene include the baby sock, horsehead, monster and a teddy bear. These can be audience draw items for a different than the first scene because it appears to target more of a modern class family. The items that are listed such as the baby sock can target parents, the horsehead could be representing hunting or horse farmers, and the teddy bear can be a symbol of the younger audience. One minute and forty seven seconds into the video band member Zoltan Bathory is sitting in a more floralistic room.
This scene is a little different from the other two because I have no clue how to compare these items to an audience but I will give it my best shot on what believe the items are. The first items that stick out to me are the giant Chinese ancient artifact on the right. That to me is targeting a different ethnicity by bringing items from different cultures. The next thing I noticed was the AK-47 lying next to him. This can target 2nd Amendment supporters and gun lovers. The last thing I could piece together is the drum to his left that can apply to a very broad audience because most music involves a drum.
The next big scene is drummer Jeremy Spencer. The scene he is portrayed in looks a room you would find in nursing home. There are a couple target audiences in this scene the first one is coffee drinkers because there is a coffee maker and a cup in this scene. The second is the Russell Wilson jersey from when he was in college playing at Nebraska which grabs football fans attention and finally the last item his the superman underwear he is wearing that attract superman fans and whoever else that is attracted to
undergarments. My opinion on the video is that it shows from start to finish people change over time. If you watch it in the beginning it shows all the band members sitting in their rooms but as the video goes on it shows how their emotions consume them and they go on a rampage. As you watch you will see Ivan take a baseball bat to a TV, Jason smash his guitar through a coffee table, Jeremy slam his football helmet into a coffee machine and Chris takes a chainsaw and annihilates the couch with it. This shows me because of how all the rooms are set up differently it tells me anyone doesn’t matter what paths you have walked or chosen everyone still has the demons inside them. The methods that are used to demonstrate the central idea are using good visual and textual evidence in their song to get their message through very clearly. The rhetorical only rhetorical appeals I could find were towards pathos because of the emotion in the lyrics because of how it ties to your inner feelings. The text, visuals, and sound work together to convey the message because of how the song starts on easy going tempo then as the song goes on the lyrics get deeper and deeper and you can see and feel the emotion while watching the video on how intense it gets. Some of the features of the source that may work against its ability to deliver its message and carry out its purpose with the audience is the genre of music that this band produces that is really one of the key factors because a lot of people do not enjoy heavy metal. Some aspects of the source that could be more convincing were how the middle of the video was constructed because to me it was just like a filler of some sort and I lost some interest during that part of the video. Another aspect was the lyrics because a lot of the lyrics were repetitive as the song went on. There are audiences that would not find the source to be convincing because some parents or kids might not take interest into the language in the music other groups would include anything opposite of heavy metal such as piano and other soft stuff like that. The source connects with other sources or background information because the topic or subject throughout the song stays the same which is that everyone has demons inside them. After going through watching the video and analyzing the video from visual and textual evidence never realized or payed much attention to the details in the scene of and how the lyrics tie into all the motions. With all that analysis in mind the song has a solid backing saying there are demons inside.
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