The music video for the song "Virtual Insanity" by Jamiroquai depicts the singer dancing in a room where the floor appears to move, representing a descent into insanity from advanced technology. There are references to works like Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and the film "The Shining" that also involve madness. While breaking conventions of typical music videos, it uses visual illusions through camera angles and editing to enhance the concept of the song's lyrics. The video aims to provoke intellectual thought among audiences about humanity's relationship with technology.

1. Similar Text Analysis
Jamiroquai – Virtual Insanity
Genre: Acid Jazz
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The lyrics to the song depict a world that
humanity is heading toward in which
technology has gone to extremes. It makes
the audience aware of how modern
technology is warping what is normally
considered immoral, one of the lines in the
lyrics is ‘and now every mother, can choose
the colour of her child that’s not nature’s way
well that’s what they said yesterday’, this is,
in my point of view, the strongest message
of the song. The rest of the song carries
through with the same tone of eventual
decent into chaos, insanity and eventual fall
of humanity. There are small quotes in the
lyrics that imply this, like ‘When things are big That should be small‘, this is representative of the
advances in the size of hardware like increasingly larger televisions.
The music video is both performance and concept driven, there are no visible examples of a
narrative and the lyrics do not suggest one. Deconstruction of the video shows the singer dancing
and singing across a room in which the floor is seemingly moving. As this video is concept driven
many of the things that occur in the room are representative of the breakdown into insanity. The
only apparent theme is the digression of sanity due to the advances in technology. Overall it asks the
audience to evaluate their own humanity.
The colours in the background suggest innocence and purity as all the walls are white. This
representation reflects the concept of the song and the complex being set by the lyrics, which as
humanity develops technologically it is doomed to lose its sanity. The whole video is recorded in a
padded room of which already has a direct connotation to insanity; it is commonly represented as
where asylum patients are held.
The audience for this video really can only be fans of the genre or fans of Jamiroquai. Even though
this is an Acid Jazz/Funk style song the video breaks nearly all conventions so it is only the song itself
that makes clear, with the sound and style, what genre it is. It is more likely to be the style of dance
and the visual effects used that would draw audience attention, as the video is not representative of
any genre. However there are a few intertextual references making the video draw interest to the
viewers that understand these references. They act almost like a special invitation singling out those
viewers.

2. The singer himself is
dressed to stand out;
his clothes are very dark
in colour and frame him
so that he appears
almost larger than life.
He breaks conventions
by not dressing overtly;
his clothes are casual
and are representative
of the ‘everyday man’,
unlike the standard
connotations of a music
video in which the
singer is representative
of the audience’s
aspirations. However there is always aspirational value in music videos either the want to live like
the artist in the music video or to have the lifestyle represented in the music video. This video does
not follow these conventions instead it allows the audience to think about the concept being
delivered. This song is targeted at a specific audience, it is meant to relate to a more intellectual
audience, possibly university students as it is trying to convey a heavy message.
There are some intertextual references, these references may now be considered general
knowledge but likely not to the mainstream. There are three very clear examples of the references.
The black bird seen in the video
could be seen as a raven. To make
a link between this and Edgar Allan
Poe’s famous poem ‘The Raven’ it
was the main contributor to the
narrator’s descent into insanity.
It’s likely that this is the reference
because if we were to take direct
connotations of the raven it is
more to do with the occult.

3. The cockroach that follows could be a
reference to disgust but more likely
due to the lyrics would relate to,
‘Cockroaches are symbolic of tenacity
and longevity and could symbolize
the need for renewal, rejuvenation
and self-cleansing of your
psychological, emotional, or spiritual
being.’ This would be representative
to the nature of the lyrics, that
everything is falling into insanity and
all of this will end with a downfall.
In the video there is also a pool of blood leaking out from under the perspective of the camera, from
under the sofa and out of the wall to the far
right. This is likely a reference to ‘The
Shining’ which followed a family who were
left stranded in a hotel with a history of
freakish deaths. The father in the family
stranded there gradually went insane and
attempted to kill his family. There is a
famous scene in the film of an elevator
door opening and a large amount of blood
gushing out, this is also the scene used in
the official trailer to the film.
As this is a very unique video that does not follow conventions of standard music videos there are
many common conventions that are lost. There is no reinforcement of popular ideologies such as
sex, money and power, except for the obvious Hyper-reality. The video represents what can only be
described as a visual breakdown to insanity with the moving floor and furniture and the blood
appearing from under the furniture. These are incidents of hyper-reality as they must have been
edited to be possible but it is also an example of what is overly real in the literal sense of hyper-
reality.

4. The video is also visually interpreted as one shot, this is unique in a music video as it breaks the
conventions of the more fast paced edits of a video with the variety of continuity edits used such as
matched action or matched movement. However there
are edits used that focus the camera on a certain object
removing all other perspectives, this creates illusions in
which the audience sees what can seem as warping of the
room. In this
instance the chair is
moving toward the
camera then the
focus is shifted
toward the bird for a few
seconds and in that time
the chair is back in its
original place. It is due to
the use of two shots edited together in such a way that it
appears as one shot through the entire video.
The set was built to move around so that it appears that the
floor is moving however the chairs also sometimes appear to
move which aids the illusion. This though is done through
the transition of the shots were some of the chairs are stuck to the walls.
The preferred audience reading of this text is easily attained as the song is very straight forward with
its message. If they do take this reading then it implies that they would take a deep hard look at how
their life is influenced by dependency on technology. However there is a possibility that the
audience takes the oppositional reading but this is very unlikely due to the nature of the lyrics, on
the other hand people who are materialistic and have the advanced technology may be against the
preferred reading and be happy with the way the world is and where they are headed in it. However,
I think most of the audience would take on a negotiated reading of the song this would be due to
our natural reliance on devices that make our lives easier, accepting the message from the lyrics but
taking no action to make a change.