Sam Smith: Not the only one (Analysis)

The narrative of this music video is a love story; this is helps to back up Tim O Sullivan’s theory that all media tell us some sort of story. 

When looking at Kate Domillies theory which states that every story can be filtered into one of the eight narrative categories: This video falls into the Tristan and issault narrative of a ‘love triangle’. (Through careful mediation, media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves – not usually our own personal stories, but the story of us as a culture or set of cultures.) This Narrative follows Todorov theory of the equilibrium of diegesis as the female actor is the protagonist and the male is the antagonist, the disruption is the male cheating this leads to the females ‘quest’ to destroy his property. Finally leading to him returning home and her acting as if nothing had been done, this then starts again like (Groundhog Day).

When watching this video the theory from Bordwell and Thompson (1997) states that it offers two distinctions between stories and plot which relate to the diegetic world of the narrative that the audience are positioned to accept and that which the audience actually see. This is seen in the fact that this is presented to us as an audience in parts, the start of this piece shows the protagonist and antagonist kissing, and this is then shown at the end which shows us as audience a chance to establish he beginning and the end. The video is made through cross cutting showing the two sides to the story,  one being the male being ‘bad’ due to cheating and the female being ‘good’ by staying loyal as well as the male being ‘happy’ and the female being ‘sad’ this is stated in Claude  Lévi-Strauss (1958) Theory: which states that  ideas about narrative amount to the fact that he believed all stories operated to certain clear binary opposites such as ‘good vs bad’, ‘right and wrong’ , there is no in between. This is shown through this music video as the male is doing wrong where as she is doing right.

The use of mise-en-scene within this video is shown when the Male actor is wearing black which connotes bad whereas the female is wearing white which connotes innocents, this is how the institution have tried to imply the story  to us as an audience, in which this is how we understand Claude  Lévi-Strauss (1958) Theory. Another use of mise-en-scene is the fact that the female who the male is cheating with, is also dressed in black again adding to how we are shown the characters  within the story.

Within this as well the use of Laura Mulveys male gaze theory is shown through the female who the male is cheating with, she is see with very little clothing on as well as none at all, this is a way to attract a male audience and helps to build on stereotypes though Tessa Perkins Theory as the women involved in the cheating is shown as a more sexual object and more provocative than the wife of the male.