M.I.A.- Paperplanes

This is the video for M.I.A’s single ‘Paperplanes’. This video is mainly performance based with the singer, M.I.A playing the role of a girl who works in a truck selling sandwiches but wants to be rich.

The opening shot establishes that the video is set in New York, as we see shots of the city's iconic skyline. These shots are romanticised as they have been filmed in black and white and are showing the wealthy Manhattan areas of New York, however this shot is in contrast to the rest of the video, which is set in down town New York. In comparison to the establishing shot of New York, these shots are bright and colourful, highlighting the contrast between these two areas. This shot is very similar to the opening shot of Jay Z featuring Alicia Keys video (below left), Empire state of mind, which also shows shots of New York in black and white. The videos are very similar in the sense that they show different different areas of New York.

It is obvious from the start that this woman does not live in the wealthy part of the city, illustrated by what she does for a living (it is clear she does not live in Manhattan from the fact she is selling sandwiches out of a truck), the clothes she wears and the landscape that surrounds the singer. One shot that I find interesting in this video and the shot I feel illistrates the other side to New York is the shot of M.I.A surrounded by fake designer clothes and handbags. Instead of showing the side of New York that you would see in shows such as Sex in the City, where everyone wears real, expensive designer clothes because they are relatively wealthy, in this video we get a glimpse of the side of the city. The people still care about the labels they’re wearing but they cannot afford to buy the real ones so wear fake ones. The copies of clothes also suggest that there is a lot of crime taking place in the area. Crime is something present throughout the video, with M.I.A talking talking about how she want to “take your money” and the gun shots in the sound track and the singer making her fingers into the shape of guns. I like these shots because they reinforce that this video is not about the sophisticated, wealthy area of New York.

Although the lyrics and the video are not related, it isn’t difficult to believe that the woman in the video would be singing about this. She is clearly a person who dreams of bigger things and thinks money is going to take her places. The reoccurring line “All I wanna do is take your money” and the shots of cash in the till register and the money flying through New York as paper planes shows that M.I.A wants the money that the rich have and that money clearly has a huge importance to her as she is seen counting the money throughout. This video does help us understand the lyrics better because we learn more about the situation that these people are faced with and their desire to escape.

The shot of her surrounded by a group of women when she is walking through the streets of New York also confirms that she is probably not the only person who thinks like this and she is representing the views of many other people who lived in impoverished areas of this wealthy city.

The aspect of this video I enjoy the most is the performance because it shows the singer has attitude, which we would expect from someone living in this setting and it matches the genre of the song. The audience for this song is likely to be young people who are into urban and hip hop music.