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Writer's pictureNick Saward

Love the way you lie-Eminem ft Rihanna

The video to this song by Eminem and Rihanna portrays many themes and the music video has aspects of both types of videos, Narrative and performance, which makes it a conceptional video.

The first scene in the video (also the cover of the music video) is a close up shot where Rihanna is singing with the fire in the background, matches the lyrics because the first lyrics she is seen singing 'just gonna stand there and watch me burn?well thats alright because i like they way it hurts' portrays the emotion that the character, that both Rihanna and Megan fox are portraying, is feeling because it shows that they have gone through so much pain that they have begun to grow used to it and even started to enjoy it. Another message this could connote is that the male character doesn't care about how much pain they are in and just watches as Rihanna is literally and figuratively burning. It could be implied as figuratively burning because it shows that they are slowly giving up because of everything that ha happened and burning slowly takes away at the body before it kills the person and that could be the same as a relationship that features domestic violence and anger which is shown throughout the rest of the music video. However the soft tone of voice that Rihanna is using in this video contrasts the lyrics because the lyrics portray a sad and angry character but the tone of voice portrays a more calmed and content character arc. this relates to Levi-Strauss' binary oppositions because it shows Tone vs Lyrics and Video because they both show completely different messages to the song. At the end of the next verse which is rapped by Eminem there is a line 'I'll never stoop so low again, I guess I don't know my own strength" is featured next to a short clip of the male character pinning the girl against the wall and then punching a whole in the wall right next to her head which connotes the idea of male dominance and male anger and also the female vulnerability because she is pinned against the wall but the is contrasted a few seconds before where the female character is the first person to hit the the male character.

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