1097： 550 words

Lana Del Rey’s “Born To Die” Music Video Analysis

Summary

Lana Del Rey’s music video for the song Born To Die is epic in truly many ways. It opens with Lana and her perceived boyfriend holding each other in front of an American flag. Then it pans down a very Roman Catholic looking church only to present Lana in a chair near the apse with two tigers on each side of her. The video presents many different scenes of her boyfriend experimenting with sex and drugs, along with scenes of desperation and loneness experienced by both parties.

The music video concludes with a scene of the two driving and crashing their car. The final scene is a larger-than-life shot of her boyfriend holding her dead body as the camera pans away from the two with the car in flames in the background. Interesting, the video ends in the same manner in which it started; the two holding each other in front of an American flag.

Analysis

The bulk of Americans primarily listen to top 40 hits. This means that what is in the top 40 is usually a good indication of what matters to Americans and how Americans see the world around them. Born To Die is song aimed at addressing and challenging the American Dream, not necessarily just by it’s lyrics, but by it’s multidimensional video. The American Dream is the myth that this video addresses, not necessarily in agreement to it, but in retaliation.

According to our book, Classical Mythology, a myth holds truth about the way humans perceive the world in relation to the culture that we live in. The American Dream is a cultural truth then because American culture is based around the American Dream. The American Dream is the idea that anyone could become whoever they want to be with a little hard work and effort. It is an idea that we should all aspire to be successful, get married, be happy, and raise the next generation of Americans behind our picket fences. This is a “Rudy thing” or in other words, something we Americans generally identify as true that makes us feel bigger than ourselves.

What I’ve found is that Lana is in fact telling us she is rejecting this cultural truth. When Lana is holding her boyfriend in front of the American Flag she glances at the camera with a very desperate look. It’s as if she’s saying “Is this correct? Am I do thing right? Shouldn’t I be happy?” but as the video continues we learn more about her discontent with her life. Scenes of her and her boyfriend fighting, nights spent alone in an empty bed as a housewife creep their way into the frames while the lyrics “sometimes love is not enough, and the road gets tough, I don’t know why” echo in the background.

The purpose of this video is to bring to light how seemingly happy and appealing the all-American dream is, but how this façade is often inevitably ill-fated. Underneath it all something is not right to Lana. To her, the dream has gone sour with the taste of a toxic relationship. To her the American dream is flawed, unrealistic, unattainable, and unsatisfying.

What I like about this video is how it draws connection to the content that we’ve learned thus far about classical mythology. Lana consistently uses symbolism such as the church, doors, and light as ways to express the deep contrast between life and death. It reminds me of The “Law” of Double Determination that the Homeric epics appear to have. Lana’s fate seems to be determined in not only by her actions, but also by those of a divine power. She can try to avoid death, but as the title states, she was born to die. In book three of the Odyssey, Nestor says “never once did the wind fail, once the god has set it blowing.” In other words, in relation to Lana’s experience, although we try out best and often succeed at cheating death, it will eventually catch up to us as if in a divine fashion.

The American Dream I would argue can be seen a throughout the Odyssey. Odysseus is telling the story of how he is a hero—how with time, patience, cunning ability, and effort, he become a hero much like how the American dream is indented to be. Classical Mythology talks about the relationship between phycology and myths, citing numerous persons such as Carl Jung. Jung believes myths contain “archetypes” or simply traditional expressions of collective dreams that cultures have developed over long periods of time. The American dream is not uniquely American, it’s an idea that has propagated itself throughout history and was only recently adopted by America as it’s ideology.

Although both works are different in terms of time period, they both acknowledge the existence of the “work hard and you will be rewarded ethic”. Although one may be promoting and the other rejecting, both admit it’s presence in our society. “The Rudy Thing” in this instance is the American Dream: a cultural truth value which we all hold to be true.

Citations

Odyssey

Book III, lines 182-183

Online Lecture

“The Rudy Thing”

Definition of a myth and term “classical mythology”

“Law of Double Determination”

“all-god-thing”

Textbook (Classical Mythology)

Chapter 1 (myth and psychology)

Carl Jung’s view on Archetypes