The video I have chosen to review is Aenima by Tool. The video begins with a still shot that introduces the mysterious device that the viewer will use to watch the video. The camera then jumps through the screen and goes into a forest where the trees are all dead and starting to thin out. The setting of the video is meant to make the viewer uncomfortable and tear down the mask that society forces famous people to wear to conform to what pop culture wants. The song Aenema is about how hard it is to live in LA while everyone around is fake. Tool takes a radical approach to the idea of consciousness and uses the image of a man in a suit holding a baby as a metaphor for the way society and corporations influence the direction of our existence. Maynard Keenan, the lead singer, uses the lyrics to express how much he wants to escape LA. Throughout the song the lyrics,” learn to swim” are chanted to criticize most individuals for conforming to the status quo and not going against the current. Learning to swim is the point of life for the members of Tool and it means being able to think for yourself and try new things. Lighting is one of the key aspects of this video because of how the director uses it to emphasize certain props and characters. The middle of the video shows a creature struggling to stay above the water because it has tied itself to the ground. The lighting in this part is used to make the creature look as if it has been trapped underwater. When the viewer learns that the entire video has taken place inside a box that the man in the suit created the paradigm of free will is shattered. Everything that the creature had known had been fed to him by the man. The creature escapes his cage and is left on its own in the wasteland that is his mind. The video ends with a cloud of smoke engulfing the creature as he tries to escape his creation.
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