My Cultural Analysis

I did my cultural analysis on Rise Against (a post-hardcore group from Chicago, Illanois) and their music video to their song "Give it All". Rise Against as a band is known for being politically outspoken "Critics", and most (if not all) their songs are expressing anger towards "The System", especially the american government. They're really active in PETA (the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and are all vegan. The're music videos are mainly about war and how awful it is, animal abuse, and current issues in the world.

I chose this specific video because I thought it had the most to write about. The video opens up with the band playing in a Chicago Transit train and shots of a group of office workers sneaking out at night doing constructive vandalism. The vandilism includes swapping a video of soldiers at peacetime with a video of soldiers in wartime. They changed a bumper sticker from "Four More Years" to "One More Month" One of the women run into a Vicoria Secret billboard and draws plastic sugery marks all over her body. The stop by a zoo to put stickers on a tiger cage that reads, "I've spent my entire life trapped in a cage." On the way back they spray-painted a big "42 Grams of Heartattack" on a McDonalds billboard advertising the Big Mac. At the end of the video they're back in office clothes and go to work, and just before it ends one of the office workers slap the same sticker they put on the tiger's cage on their bosses door.

The video has lots of obvious references to common idealogies in the United States. Like how we're told and believe that we're not at war, but our soldiers still kill and die on foreign soil. It shows the dominant ideologie about women and how they should look. Also dominant ideologies regarding animal rights, and how we are top of the foodchain and the "dominant species" and we trap other animals and put them in cages so we can look at them at our leisure and use them as entertainment.

The video itself is a three minute long Cultural analysis, and its a cool video. I'll post it right below this paragraph.