Textual Analysis

Artist : Eminem Ft Rihanna

Song : Love The Way You Lie

Record Label : Shady, Aftermath, Interscope

The music video i will be analysing is Eminem ft Rihanna - Love the way you lie. This song is by American rapper Eminem which featured vocals from famous R&B singer Rihanna; the song was produced by Alex Da Kid. Love they way you lie is the second single from Eminem's seventh album. The music video stars famous Hollywood actors such as Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan who are in a love-hate relationship and there are many scenes throughout the video to show this. This music video is both a narrative as well as a performance video. We see the storyline of the couples relationship and we also see Eminem and Rihanna performing in the music video. I think you dont usually see the conventions used in this perticular music video in most rap videos, this is beacuse this rap video is going against the norm by talking about being in love and talking about relationships whereas rap music is generally associated with money or gang life.

When the video first begings we see Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan lying in the bed next to each other which suggest that they are in a relationship and everything is good till the music stops and when she waks up drama starts. During the opening scene we see the cople fighting each other for no reason and they later end up kissing each other after they juast had a fight which suggest the love hate relationship. At 1.16 to 1.21 we see that they both enjoy pain and enjoy hurting each other, we get a mid close up shot of Dominic to suggest this.

Other examples of the love hate realtionship is shots of the couple stealing in a liquor store and later end up having a fight as we see that Megan purposly makes dominic angry by flirting with another man and we see a closupe up shot of her giving a grin as if shes about to do something stupid. throughout the video we see lots of flashbacks of the cople and the good times they had which later leads to the both of them being burnt together in their house.

Eminem is represented as a story teller in this video, as he is mostly perfroming in this video he is telling the story and i think he suggest that the story is about him and Rihanna as when we see Eminem rapping he in a field wearing a white t shirt we suggest that he's dead and he telling his story. this is also reinforced by the fact that he is standing in a sunny field. Rihanna is represent in a similar way as Eminem as she also looks as if she is suggesting this story is about her and we see this in the penultimate scene when both Eminem and Rihanna are both looking back at the house buring down.

I think the target auidence for the video are music fans of Eminem and Rihanna, also fans of the hollywood actors Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan in addition to this fans of rap as well as pop and R&B fans aged betwwen 14 - 28 will also be the target auidence. I think this music video has so many factors and famous people in it that it can attract a large target auidence. Auidences would watch the music video beacuse some people may be able to relate to the love hate realtionship the two actors have. In addition to this women and men might watch the music video because of the people in the video such as Megan Fox and Eminem.