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Church: Video Meta

This morning it is my great privilege to present a true piece of Peterick scholarship: an intensive examination of the Church video by my dear @leyley09!

I came into the FOB tumblr fandom (as opposed to all those ‘normal’ people out in the world) via two screen-based fandoms - Sherlock and Supernatural - so I am used to overanalyzing camera angles, immediate cuts, and music layered over images. And with a song and a video like Church, it’s impossible not to put some of that to use.

It’s important to remember with any kind of film media that someone has chosen what we are seeing. No one does anything in a single take. Multiple versions of every shot were filmed, and someone specifically selected the ones we get to see because those shots do the best job of telling the story that person wants us to ‘hear’.

For most films or tv shows, that’s generally the director, possibly with some writers or producers thrown in depending on the project. We at The Peterick Institute would like to point out that rumor has it Pete exerts a lot of creative control over the music videos. I’m going to go with “someone” and let you all jump to your preferred conclusions.

continued below the cut!

We open with one of our protagonists approaching a building before running into Pete. On a surface plot level, there is no purpose for Pete in this scene. The first few seconds were enough to establish that this guy is someone we’re supposed to be watching. So what is the point of having him run into Pete and drop his phone?

Since you’re reading this post on this blog, let’s assume there’s a deeper explanation, shall we?

It could be that the protagonist is a representation of Pete. They are dressed in similar colors. This guy is approaching a building that Pete appears to be leaving. He could be representing a younger version of Pete, one who is on his way into the phase of life that “current” Pete is exiting.

But what about the phone?

The dropping of the phone could represent the temporary loss of communication, which we all know was pretty much the hiatus.

Let’s move on to the building. First point - that is not a church. I've spent way too much of my life in "church", and churches don't have walls like this:

You know what does? Mausoleums (which was nicely confirmed in the behind the scenes video)

There is a major difference between a church and a mausoleum. You go to church to worship. You go to a mausoleum to lay someone to rest. (“you only get what you grieve” … )

(And sure, maybe they just picked it because of the cool stained glass, but how disappointing would that be?)

Let’s go back to that initial image for a second:

That’s right, humans of all sorts, that’s Patrick Stump looking like a Byzantine icon.

Ex: One of my favorite icons from the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. (Patrick’s just got a bigger halo.)

In addition to reinforcing the idea of “holiness” - in western/Christian iconography, only the most holy (“you’re holy to me”) are given a halo - a big, bright circle also does an excellent job of drawing your attention to whatever is inside it. It’s like a bright white bullseye.

Patrick is not the only one who gets caught dead-center in this halo. Less than a minute into the video, so does Pete:

What else is happening at this precise point? Patrick is singing "swallow it for me".

Let me repeat an idea from earlier: someone decided that this ^^ is the mental image you should pull up every time Patrick sings "swallow it for me". (I’ll wait while you process that.)

While Patrick is singing the first verse and Pete’s being holy for swallowing (look, they said it, not me), we meet our other protagonist. Together, these two make up a pair of doomed lovers (the second pair of doomed lovers we’ve seen represented in music videos for this album alone). They appear to be of different ethnicities, which is still frowned upon by some (ignorant) people. So, perhaps they are symbolic of other "non-traditional" relationships?

We cut immediately from their affectionate reunion to this:

To run with our subtext, we’ve cut from Guy-representing-Pete kissing his girlfriend to Patrick in a halo singing “trust me that’s what I will be”.

“Oh the things that you do in the name of what you love” layers directly overtop our doomed lovers being spotted by someone spying from an upper level, someone who is not pleased to see them together. It’s clear they’re taking a risk being together in public, but people do a lot of things (make a lot of risky choices) when they’re “in love”.

Cut immediately to this:

For our surface level plot, Patrick in a coffin singing “you were doomed but just enough” is pretty obvious foreshadowing - this couple is doomed because someone is going to die. But why not throw a few extra layers of subtext on that, just because we can.

First, I want to introduce another layer of sub-plot. Remember Pete, from earlier? Leaving a mausoleum (a place you go to lay someone to rest, to grieve) for no apparent reason? Can it be a coincidence that Patrick is the *only* one we see in a coffin?

This Patrick here, this is not the current “version” of Patrick. This is not 2018 Patrick’s aesthetic. In addition to the suit jacket and the fedora, he has obviously had makeup applied. While this does also emphasize the idea that he’s supposed to be dead, it also harkens back to a time when Patrick had more pronounced cheekbones. (This is by no means a negative observation; people change over time in all sorts of ways, and THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.) There has been some debate among the three of us contributing to this meta about what period this is supposed to represent, but personally, I don’t know that the specific time period matters. I think what’s important here is that a past version of Patrick has been laid to rest. WE WILL COME BACK TO THIS.

In addition to the foreshadowing for our doomed lovers, if that particular line is supposed to throw back to anything besides "I'm half doomed and you're semi-sweet", I don't know what it is.

Let’s move on to The-Guy-In-Charge.

We at The Peterick Institute refuse to think it is anything less than intentional that this guy appears in a similar outfit to that worn by “God” in the Youngblood Chronicles. Someone with a lot of power who walks into a “church” to punish people for a forbidden behavior? That’s a pretty common viewpoint. He’s also making a “prayer” gesture with his hands post-phone call. But it’s not exactly like “God”, is it? It’s just the outer layers that are the snappy white suit. Underneath, he’s wearing a dark shirt. To me, that reads as someone who just thinks they’re god - someone who thinks they’re that important, thinks they rule over your whole world… someone like a record label executive who might think they get to decide who you can and can’t be romantically involved with in public, perhaps?

Plus the ‘villain in a white suit’ trope is very common to Pete’s favorite pop culture time period. And when has Pete ever been able to resist a pop culture reference?

FUN FACT INTERRUPTION:

If you pause just right, you can get Pete making this face at the same time Patrick’s singing “I’d get on my knees”, which isn’t related to anything really, it just makes me giggle.

Next, our “villains” enter directly out of a bright light - bit like the “light at the end of the tunnel”, yes? This really just reinforces the idea that this is some kind of “divine justice”....or at least justice that thinks it is divine.

Our star-crossed lovers attempt to escape. They clearly know that this was a possibility. They knew being together was dangerous. They must have thought they were safe in this crowd because they weren't being the slightest bit discreet, but they weren't.

It’s fairly easy to see that, while they’re trying to hide in a back room, our lady protagonist takes off a necklace and puts it on her boyfriend. But it happens very fast, and it’s difficult to see what’s on the chain. It took me several viewings and a lot of frame-by-frame skipping to figure it out -- it’s a ring. (Seriously, just when I think this video can’t get any more painful.) She pulls it out from underneath her choker, so it’s something she was hiding.

These two aren’t just hiding a relationship, they’re hiding the nature of that relationship, the seriousness of it. So why reveal it now? And even better question, why follow the ring with a shot of Patrick in the coffin?

You've got to have a lot of nerve to drag someone out into a group of people, into a well-lit public setting, AND THEN KILL THEM. These guys had the perfect opportunity to stab our protagonist in the back room, and Guy-In-Charge chose to drag him out of there, shove him into the crowd (getting everyone's attention), and then stab him. That's a helluva statement. That isn’t a small statement for a small audience ("I don't want you to be with this particular guy"); that’s a big statement for a public audience (“this is what happens to people who don’t follow the rules”). This is someone being made an example in order to scare other people.

When our hero gets stabbed....he doesn't bleed right. That's not what fake Hollywood blood looks like; that's not what actual human blood looks like. I’ve seen some suggestions that it’s glitter. It is sparkly. But frankly, even if there’s glitter in it, the color/consistency looks a lot like the shitty grape juice I've spent most of my life drinking for Communion. (**After seeing the BTS video, there’s definitely a liquid involved.) WE WILL COME BACK TO THIS MOMENTARILY.

The last thing you see in this video is Patrick-in-the-coffin. Not the woman who's just seen her boyfriend murdered, not the two of them together in some kind of Romeo-and-Juliet style final embrace. No, the last thing you see is what appears to be a younger version of Patrick laid out like a wake. That's the impression they have chosen to leave us with, the one image they want to linger on our minds along with the final line of the song, “I’d get on my knees, yeah”.

So we’ve seen one layer of story - a pair of lovers torn apart against their will, a couple who are willing to risk everything to be together, a relationship that ends in conflict due to outside forces. If you’re familiar with shark-myths’ Tryst Theory, this could not fall any more in line. (If you’re not, um, this is basically it without the details.)

And underneath this surface layer, we have a past version of Patrick being laid to rest with only one visible mourner:

And the thing that we are supposed to associate most with this “dead” Patrick?

“I’d get on my knees”

He sings some part of that line four times from the coffin, five times if you want to count the final “yeah” after the last actual lyric.

(If you’re curious about the other things coffin!Patrick says, it’s “you were doomed but just enough” 2x and “confess my love”, so feel free to read into that however you’d like.)

Now that we’ve done our scene-by-scene breakdown, what are some other themes we’re seeing in this story?

First, I promised to address this:

Pete singing along is not a new phenomena, for sure, but singing along to a line like “confess my love” is….interesting, to put it mildly. It puts us at The Peterick Institute in mind of this quote from Patrick: “I don’t think Pete thinks of himself as a bass player. I think he thinks of himself as a singer. He sings through me.” What a lovely demonstration of Pete using Patrick’s voice to express himself.

Next, I want to touch briefly on how little we see Joe and Andy in this video. While that used to be (unfortunately) more common, more recent videos have been better about giving screentime to these guys. This was one of the first things I noticed watching this video the first time through. You're nearly halfway through the video before Joe or Andy get their first close up or solo shot, and neither of them gets centered on that halo like Pete and Patrick do. Andy gets closest, but it looks more like an accident, just because the drums are set up in front of it. It’s not the nicely centered in the frame kind of shot that both Patrick and Pete have. In addition, neither of them play any part in the coffin!Patrick subplot whatsoever, which also reduces their screen time.

This is interesting mostly as it relates to Pete. Patrick is the one signing; by default, he becomes the center of attention. One would expect the majority of the “concert” screen time to go to him. Additional “concert” screen time should be split fairly equally between the rest of the band. It is not.

You have two options for why that is. 1) The people-making-decisions are idiots and assumed that everyone would rather look at Pete than any of the other guys, or 2) it's intentional. What's the point of making the people you see most in the video besides our doomed lovers Patrick and Pete? Gee, I wonder.

Communion --

I mentioned Communion earlier while discussing the not-blood we see when our protagonist is stabbed. I think that’s a very relevant point. For one thing, it’s one of the main rituals associated with “church”. For many believers, that ritual confers a degree of holiness upon you when you participate in it. You’re supposed to confess and repent of your sins before you take Communion; for at least that brief moment, you’re as holy as you’re going to be. (At least in the tradition I’m familiar with.)

In addition, Communion is a fairly common part of a lot of funeral services, which is also very appropriate for our setting and subplots here.

And it’s not the first time this has come up:

In case you’re wondering why I chose only these two images, it’s because there aren’t matching images for Joe and Andy. You get a shot that is probably supposed to imply that they participated, but you never actually see them do it. (And shhh, don’t tell me that it’s probably for the same reasons you don’t see Andy eating/drinking/doing drugs in Young Volcanoes, shhhh.)

In my experience, two people dressed in white up in front of God taking Communion…...are getting married. (My dad wore a white tux in my parents’ wedding, so...)

Death/Rebirth --

This is not an idea that is new to this album. A quick glance back at SRAR and the Youngblood Chronicles is plenty of evidence of that. We’re connecting it directly to the images of a past!Patrick though. The fact that Patrick is made to look so different in the coffin than he does in the “performance” shots is a huge visual clue. As I mentioned earlier, I personally don’t think it matters which period of time this past!Patrick represents for each of us. What matters for the metaphor is that a past version of Patrick is dead/gone/doesn’t exist any more. As someone who was overly-churched, it reminded me a little of the idea that Christians are (IDEALLY) supposed to "die to the world" -- leave ideas/behaviors that aren't church-compliant behind them, in the past, as they are "reborn" into a sparkly new-and-improved version of themselves.

We’ve seen Patrick do this before in the Save Rock & Roll video, where he rejects the [brainwashed] version of himself and ends up in heaven, in a new-and-improved (AND WHOLE) version of himself.

To me, the depiction of a past version of Patrick - AND ONLY PATRICK - as being dead is big, huge jumping-up-and-down-with-pom-poms metaphor that the version of Patrick we’re being shown in the coffin doesn’t exist anymore.

As we at The Institute debated this issue, I received the following message from @shark-myths:

“The idea of possibilities dying out and ending *in order for them to be rejuvenated* is so key here. Like, they were doomed from the start and have always been each other's certain doom, and they destroyed each other and the band, and then impossibly and against all odds they ROSE AGAIN TOGETHER. Now there are no limits.

if you believe in peterick no end is final and no death is real.”

I read that email, minimized my browser, and looked right at this on my wallpaper slideshow:

“No end is final” indeed

To borrow one of my favorite pop culture quotes: "And what do we say about coincidence?" "The universe is rarely so lazy."

Thank you Leyna!!! Your contribution to scholarship will live on forever. Just like Peterick. 💜💜💜

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