Daft Punk’s musical meme show “Around the World” is a highly symbolical piece of audio-visual text as its centres around the theme of human life. This musical piece belongs to the French house genre, a sub-genre of electronic dance very popular in the 1990s. This video starts with some symbolic figures dancing to a thumping beat of pop music; a group of four women dressed in coloured swimming costumes stands on stairs, waving their bodies upwards and downwards with the beat, and four giant men with disproportionately large chests and small heads moving up and down lonely stairs in a rhythmic manner. In the middle, on a round platform, four mummified figures keep raising and lowering their bellies with the rise and fall of the beat. Suddenly the men and women switch their stairs, and the men start chasing the dancing women in pairs. The women start moving up and down the stair while shaking their bottoms.
At the same time, four men clothed in black skeleton suits and wearing human skulls appear in the foreground showing fancy moves like raising their legs, turning their backs while shaking their abdomen, and bending back. This move is followed by a marching of the group of four men in space suits moving mechanically in a circle around the other people. The mummies and the spacemen occupy the stage and keep dancing to the beat. After their feat, the skeleton men and women wearing swimming costumes come to the front and start dancing in unison. Finally, they all gather in a circle except for the mummies and start moving in circles as per the beat of the music till the stage becomes dark and the video ends.
Since the entire video comprises a single refrain, “around the world,” the interpretation of this video is purely based on the symbols presented on the stage. The dark atmosphere of the stage, the big round lights at the backdrop, and the weird and mysterious dance of these images signify that this music video represents the status of the world and man’s life in the grand cosmic scheme. The playing of the same music throughout the video, coupled with incessant repetition of the refrain “around the world,” represents the divine command that staged this world and now directs all human actions. The stage is the embodiment of the world, and the dark atmosphere around it may be taken as a vast dark space around the world; in the same way, the round lights in the back glowing in a specific pattern represents stars. Overall, the video symbolically and subtly represents the reality behind the world and its charm.
Several aspects of this masterpiece reinforce the argument presented above. The four men with miniature heads aimlessly moving down and upstairs to the tone signify the general intellectual incapacity of man. They are the men who are unaware of reality and keep taking part and wasting their energy in vain worldly affairs until the end of their lives (Daft Punk). Their abnormally small heads represent their low intellect, and they further reinforce this notion when they start chasing the swimming costume women. It is crucial to note that they can never get their hands on the women.
Additionally, their abnormally large chests represent their physical prowess, contrasting their meagre mental faculties. All these features and their movement on stage embody man’s carnal desires that make him pursue the deceptive charm of the world and blur his mental faculties. Overall, these unnamed men are the sad graphical representations of the sad fate of men on this earth, as bound by the cosmic law represented by the constantly repeating music; he is unable to grasp the reality and plays his role as a puppet in the hands of cosmic powers.
The unknown figures having no individual identities lend strong pathos to this video and intensify its message (Daft Punk). These figures inform the viewer that their names and identities do not matter in the greater cosmic scheme as they are all just actors playing their parts. Daft Punk’s effort to expose the reality of human life via revealing these nameless figures in front of the viewers proves successful in imparting the central message of the video. The repetition of the phrase “Around the world” 144 times is the refrain that creates an impression of globalization or general humanity; its resonating pulse acts like a mantra that makes the listener subconsciously accept the reality of human life.
The image of four live mummified beings in the central stage is a potent symbol that radiates the impression of the ultimate end of humankind: death (Daft Punk). These mummified figures evoke the memory of ancient Egyptian pharaohs whose dead bodies were mummified to preserve them forever. In this sense, these mummified beings shown in the video embody the human desire for eternal life. These figures occupy the centre stage, and their position indicates the central role of death in the life of human beings. Their consistent body moves to the beat of the music represent death’s eternal presence in human life that stay alert and anticipates the appropriate time to cease the life of a human. Collectively, these mummified figures represent both the human desire for eternal life and the macabre reality of death that every person has to face. Therefore, the presence of these figures and their role in the video signify that this video is a miniature representation of human life observed not from the outside but with a deep reflective vision to reveal the mechanism and dynamics of the human world hidden from the naked eye.
Another significant aspect of this music video is the role of the skeleton figures wearing human skulls. The video shows four such dark figures dancing and occupying the centre stage; these manifest the fate of the human body after death. Their appearance right after the appearance of small-headed men chasing women wearing swimming costumes contrasts the gaiety and levity of life. These unknown figures appear as a stark reminder of the terrible fate that awaits every human and makes one think about the futility of the blindfolded pursuit of sensual pleasures. More interestingly, these skeleton figures, later on, appear to dance with the swimming costume-wearing women. Their dance moves make them appear alternatively on the stage, and this dance pattern is repeated several times (Daft Punk). This alternative appearance of feminine figures and nameless skeletons reveals the hollowness and vanity of human ideals. People consider women as the embodiment of ultimate beauty. However, their dance with the skeletons reveals that their beauty is transient, and from inside, they are all dead figures devoid of any human charm that they show to the ignorant eye.
This musical video explores another significant yet unique perspective of human life: the overwhelming presence of modern technology and scientific inventions in human life. The four robotic figures wearing space suits embody this aspect of human life; they appear on the stage, dancing mechanically to the beat and occupying the centre stage. The space suit they wear and their helmets are reminders of the overlapping role of modern technology in human life that has overwhelmed the human soul. Their artificial dresses represent the artificiality that technological advancement has brought about in human life. Now, human life is wrapped up in a bizarre online world of the Internet where real life and soul do not matter. It is interesting to note that with the appearance of these robotic figures, the mummified figures stand up and start a new, more vigorous dance move (Daft Punk).
These two events radiate a strong signal to the listener: with technological advancement, the human desire to live an eternal life becomes more intense. However, the continuous dancing of the skeleton figures in the backdrop reminds one of the perpetual looming presence of the spectre of death in human life. More interestingly, these robotic figures collide in pairs, and this collision reminds one of the fallouts of unscrupulous development of science and technology that creates contradictory streaks in human society. Their collision reminds one of the dangers of excessive reliance on modern technology, as their use may bring about unprecedented social problems.
Another crucial aspect of this music video is that all the four sets of human figures dance in their particular way to the beat of the music as if showing their response to the divine command. However, as the video ends, they begin to move together in circles around the stage, just like army troops marching in a specific way to a command. While moving in circles, these figures raise their right and left hands and then both hands simultaneously to show the coordination in their dance moves (Daft Punk). This coordinated movement is the last event of the video, and for the same reason, it holds the most significant symbolic significance. In actuality, this final agreement amongst these different human figures indicates the universal fact that despite their desires and characters, humans have to follow a strict domineering code of life as per the divine dictate. So, this final event shows the helplessness of humans in front of the greater cosmic scheme and the futility of their endeavours to exert their individuality.
It is safe to aver that Daft Punk has displayed humankind’s terrible and gloomy fate in this short musical clip. The nameless, unidentifiable human figures represent various aspects of human life. The vanity of human wishes, their pursuit of carnal desires that limits their intellectual faculties and keeps them blind to reality, expresses itself in the form of the four small-headed figures. The women in colourful swimming costumes embody the false and hollow beauty standards humans have set for themselves. As a stark reminder of the death and mortality of this worldly life, Daft Punk uses four skeleton figures who, dancing with women, provide a glimpse into the reality of human life behind the beauty of the flesh. The use of robotic figures is instrumental in exposing the outcome of the unscrupulous pursuit of technological advancement; most importantly, the dancing of all these different figures in unison, in the end, reminds one of the ultimate human subjugation to his fate. Besides, the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the surroundings further reinforces the theme of gloom and darkness in human life. Therefore, it is a reality that this short video represents the most accurate picture of the status of human life in the greater cosmic scheme in the form of its microcosm.
Work Cited
Daft Punk. “Around the World,” YouTube, directed by Michel Gondry. 4 April 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKYPYj2XX80