We Didn't Start the Fire // Music Video Analysis

     Hello there! Welcome to "Getting Art Smart". I'm Grace, and I'm pretty new to this idea of art and what it means. Up until this semester of my college career, the word "art" to me just meant either: 

1. That class I went to a few times a week in elementary school where I made that papier-mâché dog and felt like I had to make everything perfect and just like the teacher's example. Or...
2. The paintings and sculptures set up in an art museum that I wasn't "smart" enough to understand or draw meaning out of. 

But, after just two weeks of taking classes like "Foundations of Digital Media", "Critical Approaches to Cinema", and "Introduction to Photography", I'm learning that art comes in so many different forms and I see and understand it in my everyday life way more often than I thought. 

    One form of art that I've admired, appreciated, and even tried to make myself, is music videos. Music videos have the ability to tell many stories, through different mediums, at once. 

    When looking at film and movies, we know that there's storytelling involved in the actual words and script, but also in the visual aspects. The same goes for music videos. I love them because the images and editing can enhance the story told by the lyrics and melodies, or tell an entirely different one. 

    So, to kick off this new blog, I'll start by discussing a music video from one of my favorite musicians, Billy Joel. "We Didn't Start the Fire" is the song, Billy Joel wrote it, and Chris Bloum directed it. 

    The song is essentially a history lesson of forty years, 1949-1989, of all the major scandals, crises, rebellions, pop culture events, etc., that occurred on a world-wide scale. For reference, this spans the majority time frame of the Cold War as well. 

    Joel was born in 1949, so the song explores world history in the first forty years of his life, starting with the lyric “Harry Truman”, as Truman was inaugurated as president in 1949, and ending with “rock and roll-a-cola wars” in reference to the 1989 start to the advertising war between Pepsi and Coke brands.

     There is so much to unpack with this song and video that I can’t nearly get to it all without writing a novel, but I will try to hit the main ideas. The song is extremely packed with information and I think the music video accompanies the song well without overloading on visual imagery. 

    The video begins with a classic domestic kitchen in a 1940s home with a newly-wed couple, and Billy just hanging out, seemingly invisible to the couple, wearing all black. As the song progresses through the decades, the home and its occupants change and develop with it, but Billy remains unchanged.

     In general, the video reflects the domestic, average life that goes on during these major world events and shows another side to the narrative of the song with scenes that reflect the impact of the big issues on every-day people.

     Throughout these scenes there are many direct and symbolic references to the events mentioned in the song, such as a burning draft card and “Elvis Goes to War” headline on a newspaper.

    

     There are also cuts to Billy sitting in front of flame-engulfed, famous photographs of some of these major events. The main refrain of the song, “We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning, since the world’s been turning”, is captured in the video as the family experiences the struggles of living in our imperfect world, no matter what decade or generation. 

    The quick cuts, rapidly changing scenes, and use of light show the fast passage of time and changing circumstances of the world around us and help to create a chaotic environment. 

    

    I think Billy’s constant presence in the home of these people represents “the fire”, which is the corruption, tragedy, and chaos that has, is, and will continue to exist in our world. At the end of the video we see a wide frame of the set, where there are flames surrounding the house, showing the true disaster that’s been present throughout all time, despite what romanticized versions of these eras we have in our heads. 

    I was also entertained by many people’s modern lyric adaptations to the song in the comment section of the video, reflecting that the fire is still burning to this day, and we are most definitely witnessing that right now with a global pandemic, climate crisis, and an extremely contentious election to name a few examples.

     This song and video may seem like a pessimistic view of the world, but I think Billy’s intention is to unify all people, instead of placing blame on any one generation for “starting the fire”. I think the director did a great job carrying this message through with the video. 

    We can rag on millennials and boomers all we want, but every era has its own issues, so why try to place blame and devalue entire generations of people when we all have to deal with the same things. I think empathy is the theme that should be taken from this work more than anything, especially for the ordinary person. 

    Corruption in government, big-businesses, and among the wealthy does the most damage to the ordinary folks, barely blinking an eye, as Joel portrays throughout the video. Until we can put out the "fire" at the source, it'll keep burning, and I think it would be much easier to handle if we don't just try to place blame.

    

    This video is a great example of how accessible art can be, especially with modern technology and platforms like YouTube. If I can draw meaning from a piece of digital art like this, anyone can! Thank you for reading, I hope we can all start looking for deeper meaning in more forms of art, and I'll be back soon to do just that!