Sound And Vision: Marc Webb

In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week, five music videos that Marc Webb made that feel like precursors for his new adaptation of Snow White.

As a music video director Marc Webb specialized in videos for nu-metal, pop punk and emo acts. A lot of these videos, like the genres of music themselves, scan as achingly sincere, bordering on the silly. It is in a lot of the films Webb made ever since that this balance between the silly and the sincere gets pushed into the extreme. The rebound romance for the protagonist of 500 Days of Summer having the name Autumn is such a groan worthy moment. And while there is a certain emotion to the moment where Spider-man tries to save Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-man 2, the moment his web reaches out as if it is a hand is both somewhat beautiful and hamfisted.

This lack of balance seems to be on display in Snow White, a film that seems all but doomed at the box office. While a lot of the preliminary backlash against the films comes from racist nitwits who could not give a rats ass about Snow White, there are some moments in the trailers that gave me a lot of pause, like the CGI dwarves that look horrendous. Marc Webb seems like an ill fit for the material, at first. That is until you realize that a lot of the imagery and thematics of Snow White have shown up in his music videos before. And in smaller pieces like the videos the silly sincerity is a lot more palatable and fitting.

Take for instance the music videos for The Used' All That I've Got (see below) or Evanescence's Call Me When You're Sober (see below). Both use gothy fairy tale trappings that heavily rely on the imagery and vibes of the Grimm fairy Tales, and adjacent stories. If the tone seems somewhat removed from Disneys reworkings of those fairy talles, that's fair. But especially in Call Me When You're Sober there is an arch theatricality that seems like a blueprint for Webbs fairytale obsessions. The possibly poisoned apple shows up in the first 30 seconds after all.

Edging even closer to Snow White is the music video to My Chemical Romance's Helena (see also below). In that video a funeral service turns into a full blown musical choreography including umbrellas. The apotheosis of the video is the moment when the woman in the open coffin comes to life, dances a solo ballet, before dying again. It is a very clear precursor to the new Webb film.

Two other music videos that edge close to Snow White are reminiscent of the Seven dwarves. In both the music videos for Call Me When You're Sober and Helena feature dancers acting in unison (a trope that also shows up in Green Day's The Last of the American Girls), where individuality seems sacrificed for being part of the collective. The dwarves in Snow White have always been less individuals than a group unit, where their relative individuality only matters in opposition and relationship to the rest of the group This clone-like lack of individuality shows up in two Webb-videos.

The first is Regina Spektor's Better (see below), where many women looking very similar to Spektor act in interplay and group activities. It is a nice, quirky video, showcasing both Spektor's unique vision, both lovingly poking fun at it at the same time.

This idea gets pushed to the extreme with Weezer's (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) (finally below) I Want You To. Here a whole town is filled with Weezer clones, including children with the face of Rivers Cuomo and the other band members. It is very reminiscent of the uncanny valley CGI creations that are present in the Snow White trailer.

While I expect Snow White to have a Disney-gloss that will effectively kill all of Webbs individuality, all signs point towards this being somewhat of a passion project. While his film projects never worked for me, and I don't expect that to change with his new film, I think he is a fairly decent music video director. There is something to be said for the quirky short form Webb excels in, where the separate pieces form a cohesive whole, with certain themes, visuals and story beats returning again and again. Almost similar to the dwarves themselves if you think about it: a whole, yet again separate.