Weekly Blog Post 5

Peace and beauty seldom occur on Earth anymore and the moments in which they do should be cherished. "What I've Done" by Linkin Park accentuates their music video by appealing to the feelings that have developed with increasing misuse of the Earth, it's resources and creatures. The music video elegantly juxtaposes opposite images such as dictators with pacifists, to evoke the sentiment of the audience. Surreptitiously, opposing images wear on the audience and their "better" judgment to force them to feel that they themselves have caused such horrible things to be present in the world when they could do something to prevent them. Whether past or present, events still manage to touch every person anywhere on the planet through explicit media content to the experiences of family and friends. Sometimes an individual has to be reminded of such horrible and beautiful phenomena that take place and the video reminds the audience the caprice of the human race.

The organization of the video highlights the use of logos to better appeal to the emotion of the audience and the stance of the band on the matter. The video opens with creatures of nature contrasted with the image of the band and all the unnecessary machinery in the middle of a barren desert, severely contrasting the natural features with the conspicuous amps, helicopters and instruments of the band. The song begins with the bang of a bomb from the era when the experimentation of such dangerous weapons was the paradigm, therefore setting the tone for the rest of the video. Wherever there is creation, destruction closely follows and vice versa; unfortunately all destruction and woe shown is caused by people. Images of the band performing the song breaks the segments of opposing clips, giving the video some order and humanizing the members of the band by showing their emotion while playing and in some instances, mimicking the movement of the image before such as the slow motion segment of an atomic bomb bending the surrounding trees. Comparing the band and its music to the destructive forces of man, makes a statement that shows that the people that make up Linkin Park are no different from everyman in that they can take blame for any of the events shown as readily as the next person. The very fact that Linkin Park dares to recognize the destructive forces within themselves, reveals the ethos in the video, putting the audience more at ease since a celebrity band would be willing to put their reputation on the line to say we are human and are capable of great destruction but also great creation.