This is a song done in collaboration by Massive Attack and Madonna and fits in nicely with the discussion of 'structure of feeling' with respect to romantic feelings. Until posting this blog I had not bothered to see the music video for the song (I'm not so big on music videos) and I found that it actually had a lot of fantastic scenes to pick apart for the purpose of this blog. What was especially interesting though is how well the lyrics can give us the 'structure of feeling' that the video portrays.
Firstly we'll look at the lyrics for how it portrays the 'structure of feeling', and then move on to the visual aspects (which in this case do a fantastic job of intensifying the effect). When just listening to the lyrics, the feeling that the listener is supposed to extract is one of longing and desire that is not reciprocated for some reason. The line 'you don't want me no more' gives us the feeling of sorrow and loneliness of the structure, which is backed by the slow beat to the song. You cannot help but be overwhelmed by the emotion being described, and as the song progresses it simply intensifies this feeling of a more hopeless desire.
As stated before, I had not seen the video for the song but due to the nature of the structure of feeling for our time period, I was able to envision a pretty accurate idea of what the video would be like before seeing it. Firstly, it is done without color and touched with very soft edges in each scene, which strengthens the feeling of emotion 'without color', or essentially the feeling of sadness. We see our subject (of the video) pick up the phone and carry it around, make like they will call what we assume is the subject of the lyrics, but never seems to be able to and continues to be overcome with grief and emotion.
Thus we can say that together the lyrics and video convey a message that love and romanticism is the most important part of life ('don't play with something, you should cherish for life') and that the feeling of mutuality in these situations is the most powerful part ('to share is special'). These lyrics and argument are then backed by seeing the individual completely consumed by their fantasy, and spending their time lost in loneliness and only wishing that they're love interest would be reciprocating in their feelings. To argue why this is such a powerful structure of feeling, we need only to look at just what extent individuals may go to in their actions when they feel love in some way or another, whether mutual or not. Further, to bring some data to our argument, we can say that this is a very common occurrence for our society and time as the average relationship lasts approximately four years (and yes, that includes marriage) for individuals between 20 and 30 years of age and thus to be able to appreciate the feeling being put forth by the song. Even if the audience has never experienced such a drastic feeling of loss, no doubt they have witnessed it from the other side or from a third-party view.
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