Justin Biebers video for ‘As long as you love me’ is like a short film and is quite long for a music video as it comes to 5 minutes and 52 seconds, almost double the length of a typical music video. The video starts with Michael Madsen telling Justin Bieber to stay away from his daughter who Justin is dating, otherwise they’ll be trouble. This lasts for 1 minute and 30 seconds. After watching this we could tell straight away that Michael Madsen is the antagonist and Justin Bieber is the Protagonist as the audience side with him.
In the music video the time strands plays throughout. As the girl’s father is talking to Justin Bieber we see flashbacks that are telling us what has happened. Throughout most of the video, especially the dance scenes, there is a lot of enigma code as the story is not linear.
The video doesn’t follow a specific theorist such as Todorov, as the narrative isn’t typical because it doesn’t end how the viewer would like it too. However, the equilibrium of the video is when it shows all the happy memories of Justin and his girlfriend but there are some clips where it gets darker and he’s in a big, empty hall as if he’s running away that’s when you get a slight feeling something’s going to happen. The disequilibrium is when Justin is running away and when Michael Madsen sees the writing on his daughters arm.
When Big Sean starts singing, that’s when it shows Michael Madsen beating Justin Bieber up. Usually Justin would have won but in this video Justin was left beaten up while his girlfriend couldn’t do anything as she was getting dragged back by her dad. There’s not really a hero in the music video as both Michael Madsen and Justin Bieber loves the girl in the video, who is portrayed to be the princess and they want to protect her. However, from the audience’s perspective, Justin Bieber is the hero and Michael Madsen is the villain as he’s trying to split Justin and his girlfriend up. Throughout the music video it shows flashbacks so the narrative isn’t straight forward with a beginning, middle and end.
The audience are on Justin Biebers side while he’s getting beaten up by Michael Madsen because he’s the singer and most of the female audience will tend to be attracted to him. The person who the audience decide to feel towards is challenged because usually you would want Justin Bieber to win but you don’t want him to hit Michael Madsen back as it’s disrespectful and rude. Also, you would hope that Justin and his girlfriend were allowed to see each other and end happily but it’s the complete opposite. Time is represented as being very short as everything happens so quickly. There’s not any intertextual reference but you can say it’s a bit like Romeo and Juliet as Justin Bieber and his girlfriend love each other and want to be together but they’re not allowed because of Michael Madsen.
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