Critical Essay Presentation Part One

Emily Sneeden
Critical Analysis of Michel Gondry’s Work
Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor directed by Michel Gondry is a music video with dramatic lighting and camera angles to emphasize the lyrical narrative of the song. The music is all diegetic sound, meaning the actors are aware of the sound because it comes from the setting, in this case, the dance floor of a club.
The very beginning gives us a long shot of the dance floor to give us a sense of what space the characters will interact in. The women are seen in the background of the setting, sitting and chatting, while three men are shown dancing.
The video uses mostly cuts, abrupt transitions, to connect different shots. We’re given close-ups in a third person perspective to show both sides of the conversation, from behind the shoulders of both parties, and then from profiles of both. A rhythmic relationship is shown with these shots combined as a conversation.
We then see camera panning which is an effective match to Dave pushing Jemaine and Bret back so that they never leave the frame of the shot. A short transition of colored light is used to segue into the song from the spoken introduction. The bright violet and white lights in a wipe transition give it a sense of fantasy or magical realism. From this we then see a close-up of Bret’s face in the middle of a speaker moving his head in rhythm with the beat of the song.
Then, the cut goes to a medium shot of the same character, Bret, singing the words and the viewer accepts the reality that he is both a human, and part of the speaker, though little time has passed. That technique is defined as a graphic relationship because the visual similarity allows the viewer to make the connection.
The camera is stationary and instead the actor moves his head closer and farther away from the camera in order to mock and imitate the overused zoom in and out that was seen frequently in old music videos. This enhances the humor of the piece.
Spatial relationships between the characters and the camera are further explored with Jemaine revolving his body out of the frame. Jemaine’s solo presents many different video techniques where scenes are intercut seamlessly so that he is in the same position, but the people in the background change.
Because the music artists move their lips to the song when they sing, the viewers are able to infer that if the voice does not change, they are still singing outside the frame even though it switches to show a scene of what the lyrics are talking about, rather than showing Jemaine sing it.
Gondry uses repetition of colors, lighting effects, and camera angles to mirror and distort the repetition of the lyrics and beat from the song itself. The viewer is not distracted by any cheesy wipe transitions. Instead the fast abrupt cuts transition smoothly with the fast changes in focus on who is singing.
Bret appears to sing his solo by moving from squatting down out of the shot to springing up to sing. During Bret’s solo, we are quickly transitioned from a close-up of him singing to the camera into the scene on the dance floor. The disco ball reflects light from the top left hand corner framed well within the shot so that its presence identifies the source of the sparkling glimmers.
At this point in the video the camera pans across the floor in an interesting line pattern, as if tracing the front line of the dance group going in and out and back in again. A cut brings us back to seeing Bret sing. Gondry directs the viewers to see the transition to the next shot by having Bret twist his body and use his arms to motion to what he is indicating with his words and his arms.
The cut to the conga line suggests that the line had formed behind Bret so we are given spatial relationships. The camera moves backwards to allow the principal conga dancer to move across the floor but maintain his position within the frame relatively constant.
The camera quickly moves from eye level to bird’s eye view to see the scene in a different perspective. Repetition of Bret’s head as a speaker easily transitions us into Dave’s solo.
Gondry directs Dave’s moves within the camera frame as attention-demanding to reflect his personality. This is accomplished through movements close to the camera as well as Dave pointing to his self most of the time he is singing.
Another aerial view of the dance floor is interjected in Dave’s solo to show that the situation has not changed. And despite the ability to simply cut from one scene to the next, humor is added by having Dave crouch down and crawl out of the shot while Jemaine jumps in to start singing. Gondry defies normal theatrical conventions of entering from one side of the stage and exiting from the other, and instead directs both to enter from and exit to the right.
The musical interlude changes beats so the scenes change as well. All of a sudden after the camera panning across the extras we are reintroduced to our three principal actors who all have a wardrobe change and each have a semi-disco ball located at the crotch which draws attention to the subject of their lyrics and provides additional mirrored lights. With the change in music also comes a change in dance styles, from more 70s dance moves to raving. The camera switches angles almost every second which is much like glowsticking in raving in which you create such fast movements that the mind connects the light and strong lines instead of dots of light occur. Gondry plays on this by connecting all of his scenes in the minds of the viewer, going so quickly that we take what we see as reality or in real time.
The other men move slowly towards the camera incongruous in dress and manner for the occasion which again enhances the humor. We also get a close-up of a disco ball hanging from the ceiling shaped as a phallus and though we no longer see any of our actors, we connect in our mind that this is suspended above the dancers’ heads. An ultra close up of the disco ball on the crotch enhances its power within the piece.
More scenes are repeated, but an interesting camera angle not yet explored until near the end of the video is showing the dancers feet on the green and red tiles which provide more repetition of the color schemes seen in the lights. They can be seen as green for energy and red for blood racing.
A female is reintroduced as making eye contact with Jemaine though we cannot see both characters at the same time. It is implied by having the characters on different sides of the frame of the shot. They are joined in and dance together to end the song and plot, and a resolution is clear.