Textual Analysis

Eminem – without me - essay

The genre of the video ‘without me’ by Eminem, which was released on May 14th, 2002, is hip-hop and comedy hip-hop. It was directed by Joseph Khan, who looked at the characteristics of hip-hop and comedy and included them in the video. Some of these characteristics are: comics, tracksuits, women, funny sound effects, costumes, mansion – night life/money, tattoos, ‘bling’ jewellery, a man dressed as a woman, mimicking and others. All these are shown in the video and have a clear link to the video and the genre, through which they portray the comic side of the video.

There is a reference to the notion of looking as there are women in the video that are lying in bed with Eminem and they are on sexual display. When the camera is on the women, their moves are slow and sexual towards Eminem. This is known as voyeurism. Also, we can see Eminem looking at a phone, talking to someone, this is a screen within a screen. We then go into that image and it becomes bigger, as we get a split-screen of Eminem and the other male.

We can see that there is a strong relationship between the music and the visuals as the video cuts to the beat of the song. This is evident as the location changes on a specific beat of the song. Furthermore, when Eminem is rapping, there’s a close up of his face, which shows the link between him and his words, showing there is a link to the music and the visuals, hence why we can hear and see him rapping.

The video changes pace with the music, this is also evident when the chorus comes on as the artists that are in the car start to dance and the editing becomes faster and more violent and rapid, to suit the beat of the music.

The video is concept based as there is no actual story to it, it’s just clips put together to make a music video. This is a useful technique as it is easier to come up with a variety of comic scenes when there are many short clips, rather than when there is a narrative story.

From the video, we can see that the record company is trying to sell this track as a commercial rap due to the use of comedic theme used trough this video. They have presented the artist to be a powerful, white male rapper this is done through the use of low angle shots on him which display his strength. This is evident of Eminem being a powerful individual as he lives in a mansion. Eminem is presented as a comical rapper, mimicking and making parodies of other famous people e.g.: Michel Jackson in ‘Lose yourself’. His motifs are a constant creation of parodies and his appearance in white top and blonde hair. Close ups of Eminem are used, as they allow the audience to identify the artist and to see his emotions.

There are intertextual references to a TV show – Jeremy Kyle - this is acceptable due to the fact the video is a parody, where mimicking is the main theme.

There are further intertextual references to comics and avengers characters, which allow him to gain a wider audience.



Here is an essay on textual analysis. I chose Eminem as we covered him in class and he uses many textual references in his music videos.