Analysis of Jason Derulo "What If"

Jason Derulo in this video plays the protagonist and the narrator. You see him singing about what if he and his girlfriend didn’t meet and you also see him in the narration throughout the video going back in time to when he first met his girlfriend.

The video portrays objective character identities. You can see in the video it is showing from his point of view that it would have been better if he and his girlfriend didn’t meet because she wouldn’t have got hit by the car. She still would have been alive is they didn’t meet.

Todorov’s narrative model can be loosely applied to the music video.  In the beginning of the video we see him and his girlfriend who he is about to propose to. They’re moving out of their house and into a new house. The disequilibrium is displayed when she walks out the house putting boxes into the moving truck but then she gets hit by a car and Jason runs out the house and runs towards it. There is an attempt to repair the equilibrium when time rewinds back to the first time they met at a park when he was walking his dog. The resolution is shown in the end of the video when he waves at her and walks past her so that they didn’t meet and the car crash did not happen. In the video

In this video, Propp’s characters can be identified. In this video, Jason Derulo is the hero who tries to save her by going back in time and not meeting her to save her life. The villain in the video is the man in the car who was driving carelessly that hit his girlfriend. The princess in the video is his girlfriend as she gets to live her life safely since Jason went back in time and didn’t meet her.

There is a binary opposition in the music video. The binary is future and past because Jason tries to go against time and go back and try to save her.

Barthe’s narrative code is seen throughout parts of the video. There is a cultural code seen in the video at the beginning where he’s looking at the engagement ring in its box and also when they are moving into a house. This tell us that they are moving in with each other and he’s going to propose to her. There is an enigma code when you see time go back which would get the audience thinking “Is he going back to save her” and “How is he going to save her”. There are a few semantic codes in the video. One example of a semantic code would be the engagement ring which connotes happiness and marriage and love. There is also a clock which connotes time and also Jason fighting against time.

A few of Cameron’s narrative are seen in this video. There is no episodic or split-screen but there is an anachronic narrative code in it. At the end of the video you see Jason’s views of how things would have been if he and his girlfriend hadn’t met. You see her erased from any event she was a part of including the accident she was involved in. The forking-path narrative code is seen as you see Jason’s alternative life without his girlfriend.

Jason Derulo- What If   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qQCx9mxV9g