Greenday's "nice guys finish last" video2/2

We can see Greenday have purposely built this reality for themselves in this video. In reality they are normal guys who just enjoy playing music (they formed the band when they were 14), but in the video they show a simulation of themselves as being rock-stars when they trash the locker room and run out to a screaming applause. Thereby normal people will only see this as the reality of who the band members in Greenday are hence creating a hyper-reality.

Another theory key to hyper-reality is Lyotards narrative theory. Lyotard rejects “great narratives” and universal “Meta-narratives” such as the traditional western value of storytelling with “good vs evil” and rejects notions such as science and reveal all knowledge and history moves forward. Instead he prefers “micronarratives” which are unpredictable and can go any direction.

We can see this in the music video because the song is about nice guys or “suck-ups” (people who act nice to people to become their friends or partner but in reality are shallow and only out for their own gain). But in the music video it has nothing to do with that and instead focuses on Greenday performing to their fans and not what the song is actually about. It also seems to have a disjointed narrative because there are things such as they are only performing one song but need a half-time break and they act like they’ve won at the end when they haven’t actually done anything such as go against another team. This shows that the video doesn’t conform to having a narrative and instead focuses on having a disjointed narrative instead like Lyotard.

Overall I’d argue all these features point to the music video being a good example of a postmodern video. It may not be a crazy video but it has a lot of features that demonstrate postmodernism and it confirms to what the likes of Baudriallard and Lyotard theorise.