Intergalactic was a big hit for The Beastie Boys in 1998 and so a lot of work was put into the music video for the song.
Intertextual reference: The video was done in the style of a parody of a very popular Japanese movie genre called tokusatsu. Kaiju is the most popular style of tokusatsu movies, which means strange beast. The video is also similar to the genre of Japanese TV shows called sentai shows such as Ultraman and Power Rangers. This is the angle The Beastie Boys have taken in making their music video for Intergalactic but in the style of a parody. Various scenes of the video are shot in the train stations of the two biggest train districts in Tokyo, Shibuya and Shinjuku. Throughout the video they wear the florescent uniforms of the street construction workers of Tokyo. The video was very successful and won the Total Request Live award for “Best Hip-Hop Video” in 1999.
Characteristics: The body language used in the video is what we would generally expect of a Hip-Hop video, for example, “Break dancing” but as the video is a parody of tokusatsu films, it doesn’t follow a lot of the codes and conventions of a traditional Hip-Hop music. It instead puts more effort into following what is expected of a tokusatsu film but there are still elements of the Hip-Hop genre there. The obviously cheap set used gives a realistic feel of the video being an actual tokusatsu film and adds to the effect of the video. As it is shot on location there is a much stronger feeling of the desired parody which is a great effect in its self. The use of a large robot controlled by humans is very close to the sentai TV show genre. These factors make this music video a very good tokusatsu movie but are made a parody through the juxtaposition of the music and the shots of break dancing. This post is not finished yet.
Relationships between lyrics and visuals: There is not an awful lot of a relationship between the lyrics and the video throughout. Having said that the chorus of the song is "Intergalactic" and there is an invader from another galaxy, which is the main focus of the video, so the main theme of the video is influenced by the chorus but the video doesn't follow every line of the song. I think this is an effective way to do a music video and opens itself up to a lot of creativity.
The Demands of the record label: The Beastie Boys are well known for having great videos and so have a reputation to uphold with having a funny and inventive video. They have also done a few movie parodies in their videos so this is what is expected of their music videos.
By Joshua Drake
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