The Postal Service's Tattered Line of String conceptual music video analysed as product research my music video production portfolio

1. The Postal Service – A Tattered Line of String (Music Video)
June 2013
There are twomaincharacters inThe Postal Service’s‘A TatteredLine of String’video,the mainmale
we follow and a female who is introduced later, although her presence and connection to the
protagonist is mostly enigmatic.
Before the songbeginstoplay,the videostartswiththe main character wheeling his washing into a
public washroom. He puts all of his washing into a machine. However, when he starts it, the room
aroundhimbegins to spin instead of the interior of the washing machine. He desperately clings to
his seat in fear of falling, before losing his grip
and grabbingthe machine. Eventually, he loses
hold,and begins to drown in a sea of clothes as
the room continues to spin around him.
At this point, there is a cut away to a
woman on a swing in a local park. She is also
affected by this unnatural force, and the world
begins to turn upside down for her too. Where
the man fears drowning in this sea of washing
and seems extremely confused by what is
happening,the womansmilesandjumpsoff her
swing into the blue. Without fear or worry, she
disappears into the sky. Meanwhile, the
spinningof the room knocks the man out of the
door,and he,extremely confused, worried and
in fear, falls into the sky as well.
This is the semantic code. Symbolically, there
are hintstoa much deepernarrative connecting
the two characters.

2. The lyrics of the song make innocent a one night stand between two friends that sparks feelings
betweenthem.Inthismanner, the lyricssuggestaromance-basednarrative. Thisisevident in three
verses, where it says:
"When we woke, we agreed
That we would not ever speak
Of this night
To anyone, that we both knew
Then you said,
“Every time we kissed, I felt something that couldn’t exist,”
And I confessed that I thought I felt it too."
Nevertheless,there isnoindicationof this in the video itself. There is a stark contrast between the
representationsformed between the male and female character and the settings they are both in.
For the male protagonist,the most significant piece of iconography is the washing machine. As the
songopens,the settingof the publicwashroomshowsthisman getting on with ordinary, dull tasks.
For a music video, this setting is unusual as the colours are washed out and there is little of great
interest.Insteadof usingthe artistasthe character, theyuse a typical Americanmanwhoappearsto
be in histhirties. Incontrast,whenhe turns on his washing machine, the world spins instead of the
machine and eventually spills everywhere, him being buried in turn. This suggests, in accordance
withthe lyrics,thatthe maincharacter istryingto keepon top of his everyday life and hold himself
together,buthe failstodo so.The clothesare representative of hisproblems and the fragility of his
mind; he tries to control them but before the end of the video he is buried in an avalanche of
clothes. The lyrics corresponding to this are in the chorus, where the artist sings:
"I’ve got a tattered line of string
And I tie it ‘round everything
That I want to call my own
But it never seems to hold"
Again,one cannotbe sure what his issue is, but we
can assume that it has something to do with the
female we see when there is a cut away to the
swingset outdoors. She appears to be liberated,
expressed by the freedom of her easy movement
on the swings. This is a setting we would typically
associate with a child, but the director is using it to
display the free characteristic of this woman. The
representation created is abstract, and the
iconography is much harder for an ordinary viewer
to understandincomparisonto generic chart music
videos. The metaphorical style appeals to fans of
the indie genre,whichis the demographic who will
find this video particularly effective and clever.
Aside fromthe audioof the song itself,thereisadditional soundasthe videoopensof the wheels of
the trolley squeaking along the tile floor. This is used to establish the beginning of the narrative.
The shot types employed in the footage are all simple, but effectively edited to compose a music
video which is mostly conceptual and very much thought-provoking.