Video Analysis

I really enjoy this music video. In the beginning it shows a schoolboy who is looking at a train that is full of other students. These students are kept in the train car with bars and they are all wearing masks.

Next we see a classroom, and the schoolboy is mocked by his teacher for being a poet and all of the other students laugh at him as well. Then the teacher is in his house, eating, and remembering all of the students that he disciplined. It almost shows remorse on the teacher’s face when he remembers what he had done.
Soon we see students in their desks rolling by the camera, all wearing masks, and all very unhappy. There are also schoolchildren marching in a very uniform manner.

Next the entire student body is standing in a large, nondescript room singing “we don’t need no education”. The teacher is yelling at them, trying to control them. Then we see children falling into a machine and coming out as bits of meat.
Finally at the end of the video there is chaos. The children all rebel and tear down and burn the school, and capture the teacher. Then it goes back to the schoolboy sitting at his desk.

One of the major themes in this music video is individuality. All of the students are wearing masks when they are under the school’s control. They are all wearing the same uniforms and doing the same things. The schoolboy at the beginning is ridiculed because he “fancies himself a poet”. The students all laugh at him because everyone else is, and they are afraid to go against what the teacher says. At the end of the music video we finally see the students’ faces and when they rebel against the authorities involved, they become themselves. This video causes us to think about people in control, and how we should not conform to the ways of everyone else, but think for ourselves and become unique individuals.