Sirens sound and the city hums while aerial shots establish the skyline of Budapest late at night. A woman walks onto the balcony of a palace, dressed expensively in a white gown with pearl rosaries and jewel-encrusted earrings, her privilege demonstrated as she sings to the city below. But not everything is as it seems, for when the camera pushes back into an overhead shot, we see that this palace and this woman are bathed in a dreamy blue light in harsh contrast with the real-world yellow tonalities of the city below. And as the wind rustles her skirt, it feels as though she is vulnerable, as if she could fall, or scarier still, jump.
Shortly after the release of her music video, “Firework” in October 2010, Katy Perry dedicated the self-empowerment anthem to the It Gets Better Project, tweeting that, “[...] everyone has the spark to be a FIREWORK.”1 The project was created to prevent suicide among GLBTQ2 youth when, in response to the suicide of gay teen Billy Lucas, the project’s founder Dan Savage wrote, “I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. [...] I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.”3 This message of individual endurance, of empowered independence, of success through adversity, and of the celebration of the underdog are all cornerstones of American ideology and are all likewise employed by Katy Perry through both the lyrics of her song and the imagery of her video, “Firework.” To best understand how “Firework” can function as a self-empowerment anthem for struggling youth by mobilizing classic American ideologies, a close textual analysis is necessary of both the video’s narrative devices and its semiotic imagery. In what follows, I explore in temporal order how Katy’s video employs these strategies by complicating her positioning as narrator, offering her a place outside the story to maintain her American authority, while empowering the teens of the foreign city below with the frank, emotive symbolism of the American firework.
Fresh off the decidedly American video, “California Gurls,” placing Katy within the diegesis of a strange European city allows the video to construct a cultural disconnect, enhancing the feeling of alienation and isolation important in the song’s message. Budapest, which sits deep within the heart of Europe (both physically and culturally), is known globally to be one of the birth places of the Renaissance, a culture that values and celebrates artistry and difference – a culture of flourish in stark contrast with American streamlining. Situating the video here facilitates the idea that the people here are different, but romanticizes that difference as beautiful – that there can and should be no conformity where eccentricity is celebrated.
Katy’s status as American, coupled with her expensive clothing and placement on the balcony, establish her Western privilege, as though she has overcome; she has embraced her independence, and as such, has become a successful woman who can dress in extravagant garments and inhabit a position above the city. Her new empowered American self sings with concern to the city below, where teenagers from the less wealthy, less powerful nation struggle with their own personal crises. But at the same time, Katy still seems vulnerable as she comes to the end of the balcony, singing, “Do you ever feel, like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?” In so doing, Katy acknowledges that she has been where these teens are, as the underdog, and that they should, like she does, believe that life will get better even if you’re standing on the edge.
The video’s narrative is interlaced with sub-stories of youth struggling with complicated issues of domestic violence, body shame, and sexual orientation. It positions Katy as a kind of homodiegetic narrator,4 meaning that she is a character within the realm of the story; however, throughout the course of the narrative, several elements of mise-en-scène suggest that, although Katy appears to be a part of the world in which she sings, she is simultaneously apart from it. Conventionally, while character narrators (or homodiegetic narrators) are more intimate than heterodiegetic ones, they are also traditionally less objective and less authoritative. Giving Katy both roles simultaneously allows the text to straddle the line between an intimate connection with Katy’s character and her granted authority as an extra-textual figure, who is able to see all elements at once. Katy’s displacement from the diegesis is first introduced when the overhead shot of her on the palace balcony at the beginning of the video juxtaposes the two color tonalities, that is, the blue light washing over Katy and the palace versus the yellow light washing over the city below.
The first interlacing story represented in the video shows a boy cradling his younger sister who is upset by her fighting parents. The young boy turns to look over his shoulder at the adults slapping and screaming at each other, while his younger sister clasps her hands over her ears and shakes her head, overwrought. “Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin, like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?” Katy sings, as a cut back to her reveals the look of worry in her eyes while she stares deep into the camera, and ostensibly, into us, identifying our personal connection.
Another young girl sits in a chair near the edge of a pool cloaked in a heavy coat, while her friends strip and jump into the water, splashing one another and encouraging her to come in. She shakes her head timidly, embarrassed of her overweight body and afraid to show who she is under her clothes. Returning to a tighter shot of Katy’s face reveals a more encouraging countenance just before she sings, “Do you know that there’s still a chance for you?” This sends us into the hospital room of a bald young girl with leukemia who looks longingly at the beautiful hair of the dancing woman on her television screen. On her wall is the massive image of a butterfly, which itself represents the hope of transition, from the sheltered confines of a cocoon to a limitless world where it can fly as the wind blows.As she sings, “There’s a spark in you. You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine,” Katy leans her head back and closes her eyes as if she’s giving in and allowing herself to let go – a visual articulation of the release of her inner power. Firework sparks begin to burst forth from her chest as she stretches out her arms, illuminating her once blue-washed face in a beautiful prism of colors. In the first, most directly referential moment of American ideology, she sings, “Just own the night like the 4th of July.” Here, Katy is mobilizing the image of the American firework that is, literally, bursting forth from her heart to demonstrate her own empowerment. By associating the lyric with the image of her firework in the video, she is ascribing all the visceral and metaphorical connotations of the American firework to its visual representation. In American culture, fireworks explode over cities across the country to celebrate its independence day and are often colloquially associated with the American Revolution and the national anthem as iconic5 representations of the “rockets red glare” and “bombs bursting in air.” For Katy and the teens, the firework becomes the necessary symbol of their imagined unity – that is, it becomes demonstrative of their search to, as Jochen and Linda Schulte-Sasse would say, “overcome [their] separation and [extreme] differentiation [from] modern societies.”6
The firework is colorful, unique, and can light up the darkened sky devoid of color. Encouraging the teens, and by extension the audience, to “own the night” suggests that, no matter how much it is surrounded, the bursting firework will defeat the darkness of the night, illuminating the sky as it explodes with brilliant, individual colors – our true colors, which represent characteristics that are unique to each of us. But more than just the image of the explosion of light itself, the firework is powerful, unapologetic, and dangerous to anything in its path. It is loud and proud and representative of strength. We are thus encouraged to free ourselves, to celebrate ourselves, and to demonstrate to the world our pride as we show them who we are and what we are capable of doing in the darkened slate of the night sky.
Shortly after Katy’s firework erupts, the boy, looking over his shoulder once again, takes on a new kind of motivation, as his firework itself begins to spark empowering him with the strength to protect his sister. He rushes over to his parents and pushes them apart, as the chorus continues, “Baby you’re a firework. Come on let your colors bust. Make ‘em go, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’” In a darkened dance club, bathed in red light, a wallflower sits alone watching sadly as the people around him dance and celebrate. While Katy’s fireworks shoot across the night sky, the girl at the pool, still with a nervous, uncomfortable look in her eyes, stands and begins to remove her jacket.
Suddenly dressed in a more casual outfit sans fireworks, Katy exits the palace onto the thriving street, walking through the crowds of people, but going unaddressed by any of them, still devoted to the camera as she sings. The lighting on her face, though no longer tinted blue, continues to be different from the other groups of people on the street. In the club, the wallflower turns to look at a straight couple sitting next to him, kissing and comfortable with the public display of their sexuality. He looks forward, stands up and starts walking toward the bar. The girl at the pool now removes her pants and shirt so that she stands dressed only in her bra and underwear, for the first time displaying her overweight body. Another teen walking down an alleyway is thrown against a brick wall while a group of “thugs” attempt to mug him. When one of them reaches into his pocket, he starts pulling out mutli-colored handkerchiefs tied unendingly together, and when another opens his coat, two white doves fly out, startling them and revealing him as a street magician. Though it feels out of place, this particular story taps most tangibly into the American valuing of individual endurance and the overcoming of obstacles through entrepreneurial spirit and talent – by literally winning over those who would bring us down and turning misfortune into opportunity.
The cancer patient walks through the corridors of the hospital, looking into a room where a woman is giving birth, screaming as her chest shimmers with the vigor of her firework. The camera cuts to a shot of the patient through the colorful sparks, showing the change on her face as she realizes the beauty and power of what happens before her. Just then, the wallflower reaches the bar where another boy turns to look at him. The two gaze into each other’s eyes and, after a moment of brief intensity, lean into to kiss while a dance of colorful embers explode around them. The patient steps outside the doors of the hospital still dressed in her hospital gown and looks up into the night sky. The teen magician continues to impress the “thugs” on the street with tricks as his firework brightens the darkened alley. Breathing out a sigh, the girl at the pool runs and cannonballs, jumping up from the water and reaching toward the sky as her firework ignites. And finally, with her eyes closed, and a smile on her face, the cancer patient throws back her bald head and shoots her fireworks high into the evening sky as the wind whips her hospital gown and Katy sings, “You’re gonna leave ‘em all in awe awe awe.”
As the song continues, “Boom boom boom, even brighter than the moon moon moon,” hundreds of teens in a color array of outfits run excitedly through the city of Budapest toward Buda Castle, where huge bursts of fireworks flare above the castle’s dome. Katy walks alongside them, still brightly lit as she sings, “It’s always been inside of you-ou-ou, and now it’s time to let it through-ough-ough.” As the teens skip into the courtyard of the castle, Katy has already arrived in the center of the square, again a nod toward her displacement from the confines of the real-world diegesis of the story. The youth circle around her and an aerial shot shows them appearing to burst outward like a firework in coordinated movement. As the teens jump and dance around Katy, their fireworks begin to blaze, now more powerful than sparks, shooting up into the sky and exploding above the castle. Aerial shots continue to alternate with close-ups of Katy and the kids – the strength of their unity now represented as they are all together and protected by the strong stone walls of the castle.
A shot from below a well-lit Katy, with fireworks exploding all around her, again portrays her as a model of heroic American imagery as the teens celebrate what she has, ostensibly, given them. This angle, sometimes referred to industrially as the “hero-angle”, gives the subject a sense of importance, because, when shot from below, the person is literally being looked up to – almost statuesque and immortal. The next shot, from overhead, reverses this by showing Katy amongst the still dancing and celebrating youth suggesting that while she may be physically, or ideologically, distanced from the teens as a heterodiegetic figure, she is still intrinsically connected to them. The video ends with a display of dozens of simultaneous firework explosions, each unique and beautiful of its own accord, but through their collective illuminations, shining even brighter and more beautifully than the moon.
Ultimately, it is important to acknowledge that, while “Firework” does indeed mobilize many American ideologies as strategies for self-empowerment (while not necessarily delimited to empowering just Americans), it also uses particular American ideologies to talk back to what it sees as regressive discourses of Americanism, such as the valuing of America as a “melting pot”7 – that is, the notion of American culture as a motley amalgam of other value systems – as opposed to celebrating its many colorful branches of individualism. So, while “Firework” can be read as encouraging a particular breed of American cultural imperialism – other, just as appropriate readings, might find it in opposition, for even while the video ends with the fireworks bursting in sync, the brilliance of their colors is never diluted – it only gets better.
Notes & References:
1 - Zumwalt, Scott. "Katy Perry Dedicates New Video 'Firework' to It Gets Better Project." It Gets Better Project. N.p., 28 Oct. 2010. Web. 6 Mar. 2011. [ Link to article ]
2 - Though the acronym is by no account concrete, many scholars and queer theorists place the L in the initial position as if to counteract the invisibility of lesbians. My decision to re-reverse the letters is to demonstrate that the word gay, unlike the word lesbian, is not necessarily a gender-essentializing sexual identity, especially since new incorporations of queerness and post-modern feminism argue that the male/female dichotomy is not one to which the community should be subscribing.
3 - Savage, Dan. "Give 'Em Hope." Savage Love. The Stranger, 23 Sept. 2010. Web. 6
Mar. 2011. [ Link to article ]
4 Kozloff, Sarah. "Narrative Theory and Television." Channels of Discourse,
Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Robert C. Allen.
2nd ed. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992. 67-100.
Print.
5 Seiter, Ellen. "Semiotics, Structuralism, and Television." Channels of
Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Robert
C. Allen. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1992. 31-66. Print.
6 Jeffords, Susan. "Hard Bodies: The Reagan Heroes." Hard Bodies: Hollywood
Masculinity in the Reagan Era. N.p.: Rutgers University, 1994. 24-63.
Print.
7 Jensen, Klaus Bruhn. "The Humanities in Media and Communication Research."
Handbook of Media and Communication Research : Qualitative and
Quantitative Methodologies. London: Routledge, 2002. 15-39. Print.
Taylor Cole Miller is a doctoral student of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison where he teaches media theory and production courses. His primary areas of interest include queer audiences, television studies, feminism, and media histories. He is currently researching the queer and feminist potentiality of syndication for his dissertation, exploring the implications for identities and bodies especially as more and more niche cable networks are turning to the "in with the old, out with the new" strategy of second-run syndication.
