Daft Punk's 'Human After All' as a Dystopian Love Narrative
I listened to this album for the first time after reading George Orwell's 1984 in high school. Ever since then I can't listen to it without picturing the following scenes connected with specific songs. Human After All is Daft Punk's most lyrical album, telling a definite and heartbreaking story in very few words. Overall, it's my favorite collection of Guy-Man and Thomas's work.
1. "Human After All" - Exposition/Intro
montage of everyday life as it is experienced by citizens of dystopia
eventually centers on Main Character as they finish up their daily routine and head to bed
2. "The Prime Time of Your Life" - Character Development and Background
Main Character is shown as disillusioned with the whole dystopia thing
Main Character admits to themselves that they realize they are being used and oppressed by the System
Main Character modifies own clothes and puts on wild makeup and leaves home to go find the Revolution
3. "Robot Rock" - First Crucial Break in System Protocol
Main Character arrives at a Revolution rally/rave thing and meets Love Interest
there is wild, unrepressed abandon as Main Character and Love Interest get to talking and the ideals behind the Revolution are explained on a worn couch drinking illegal booze and binging on stolen food rations
4. "Steam Machine" - Militia Efforts and Civil War
Love Interest shows Main Character the Revolution's 'ace in the hole' - a modest but effective fleet of hand-manufactured steam-powered analog tanks that are designed to get around the System's electronic jamming devices
montage of Main Character and Love Interest leading multiple charges on important System bases and ascending in rank
eventually ends with a final and devastating battle between Revolution and System forces
Main Character and Love Interest are captured by the System, the Revolution is crushed
5. "Make Love" - Can't Break the Spirit, Can't Kill an Idea
Main Character is shown in a sterile white cell being passively tortured via restraint, stress positions, and multiple drugs, among other things
Main Character survives this by remembering/hallucinating the torrid night during 'Robot Rock' and their love for Love Interest
6. "The Brainwasher" - Finally Broken
Main Character is taken to a different, darker cell and subject to the worst torture imaginable - having to see [falsified] video records of Love Interest's confession to crimes against the System as well as their slow and agonizing death
in their despair, Main Character finally cracks and confesses all
7. "On/Off" - The Treatment Begins
Main Character is dragged out of the cell and sat down in front of the Machine
8. "Television Rules the Nation" - The Treatment
Main Character watches hours of subliminally enhanced trash television while strapped into a chair
subliminal messages carry certain mental signals and electrical patterns meant to reshape Main Character's mind to be more docile
Main Character's expression changes from a mix of anger, despair, and longing to a blind and mindless complacence - the Treatment has worked
9. "Technologic" - Back in the System
Main Character is shown being the mindless consumer that the System wants them to be, constantly following in the current of the latest technology and other items
Main Character buys stuff, uses stuff, breaks stuff, etc... all with that mindless smile on their face
10. "Emotion" - The System Victorious
while in a System-regulated store, Main Character sees someone who they recognize... could it be... Love Interest?
is Love Interest alive? no... it can't possibly be them... they died at the hands of the Brainwasher...
Main Character's face falls back into that all too familiar despairing anger - flashback to all of their experiences with Love Interest, including their planned future: running away after leaving the Capitol city in flaming ruins and raising a family in a colony of survivors far away in the mountains...
Main Character's mental programming kicks in, their face returning to that ignorant and vacant smile as they take an item off the shelf to go buy it then use it - and finally - break it
Main Character has been fixed
life in the dystopia goes on...