Narrative Video analysais: Love the way you lie

    

The video for 'love the way you lie' follows the typical romantic-tragedy love story. The setting is mainly within a house, shared between the two main actors, and may act as a catalyst for their anger, resentment, love, and desire, as they are both in the situation together. The opening makes an early reference to what may happen in the conclusion of the video, with the heroine holding a ball of fire as the opening lyrics begin with: "just gonna stand there and watch me burn, but that's alright because I like the way it hurts"   

It should be noted, that during the majority of the video, the actors are almost always seen either partially naked, or fully clothed when in places that involve alcohol.This may be a reference to their intimate nature, and show them to be living a lifestyle that only involves drink and sex. A lot of the lyrics that are rapped in the music video are lip synced by the actors, as a means of communication between them, such as when the hero says "wait, where you going?" to his female counter-part. Certain parts of scenes are cut back and forth between the singers (Rihanna and Eminem)  and the actors, possibly because certain lyrics are more important to the actors than the singers.  

Throughout the video, it is clear that theme of both love and jealousy is deeply explored. Whenever the heroine is either near another male or resists the heroes advances, his reactions are always violent. This is possibly the conflict that the actors face. Dominance. One does not take too kindly to it, whereas the other wants to entirely.  

The use of fire appears to be a frequent theme occurring in the music video.  Rihanna, whenever she is shown, has fire in the background. The use of this is to go with the repeated word "burn" in the chorus of the song. Symbolically, the use of fire represents either passion, desire, or deep anger.  Assuming that it represents all of theese, the fire is a symbol of the emotional turmoil the two actors feel about one another. 

Quite a bit of alcohol consumption is shown in the video. As suggested before, anger from the tragedy side of the video, may be steamed from heavy drinking between the two (more so from the male) that suggests that this par of their lifestyle is what is creating the conflict in the relationship. especially when Eminem raps that he is: "drunk from my hate"

 The burning building (their home) may reference to the fact that these emotions, of passion, lust, love etc will destroy them, as both singers, are only ever seen together in front of the house that both actors are in.  This further follows the idea of their relationship contains deep emotions that is in conflict with one another.