On How Certain Films and Songs Contain Otherness

Abstract

This article comes as a sort of voyage in the sense that it tries to go beyond the simple definitions that pin video clips down to being a mere form of entertainment and a mode of commercialization and instead shows them to be part and parcel of a well-established concourse of texts which repeat themselves with a difference. The study is thus an exploratory odyssey in the quest for the insinuations, intimations and nuances which impregnate a host of video clips made in and presumably about Morocco by a myriad of American and European artists whose works, considered in entirety, give way to what Barthes labels as the mythical, a phraseology studded with the stereotypical, which is no less insidious than the myth with its grand narratives as encapsulated in film or prose. Based on a qualitative approach, Babel, Marrakech Express, and Sex and the City are the three film samples we will set out to explore in juxtaposition with several singles: Do it Again by The Chemical Brothers, The World I Know by Collective Soul, Yalla by Inna, Marrakesh Express by Nash, Crosby, and Stills, Misere Mani by Era, and Nothing to Fear by Chris Rea.