Planning: Textual Analysis of Cibo Matto; 'Sugar Water'

‘Sugar Water’ by Cibo Matto, is a dance, alternative, track created by two Japanese artists. As there is no explicit meaning to the lyrics in the song, Michael Gondry, director of the music video, was able to interpret it in any way he liked. Therefore the storyline is not related to the lyrics at all. Neither is the editing in harmony to the beat of the track. The only thing related to the song choice in the video is at the very beginning where the lyrics are ‘sugar water’ and that is being written up on a window in the video. There is also lip synching, though it only becomes apparent that it is synchronous to the music half way through, as it begins in reverse.

This video is shot with a split screen, with the screen on the left playing forward, and the screen on the right playing in reverse. This clearly shows a creative use of artistic licence. The stories in these two scenes interact with each other in the middle, so much so that the characters swap over, into each other’s frames. This is also one continuous shot, so there is no edits or cuts made to the film.

The camera is used to get lots of different angles and shots however. There is an extreme high angle shot at one of the women walks up the stairs, and the other walking down the stairs, which then tracks them to their destination. There is use of wide shots so that the audience knows the context of what is happening and to enable them to make sense of the story. Close ups are used on the women’s faces to get an idea of what is going on in the on screen narrative. They were also used when the women were getting undressed, presumably so the video would not be explicit. The fact that the women have to get undressed in the video, does nothing for the narrative, suggesting that it is probably just for sexual desire, which is typical for the representation of women in music videos.