Textual Analysis of She Used To Love Me A Lot-Johnny Cash

I made a textual analysis on real music videos to help me explore the ways they have been created so I can introduce my findings into my own music video. From this video I mostly found out how important the visual elements are for aiding the narrative for the audience and evoke a meaning to them.
Visual codes
Visually, the music video to Johnny Cash's 'She Used To Love Me A Lot' presents its setting as being in the USA through various iconography such as the classic Cadillac, typical  and US flags.
More specifically Wall Street in New York and various lower class ghetto districts and southern US states. also the cave in Tennessee, where Cash almost committed suicide. Wall street is famous for its large financial buildings which are featured often in the video giving it connotations of money and richness, which highlights the contrast between that and the other poorer locations. This contrast is used to represent the overall theme of the music video which is the American depression. In terms of typography there is a shot in which an abandoned looking building has been vandalised with the words "My heroes have always killed cowboys". This suggests there is tension between ethnicities (specifically native Americans and Caucasians) and mostly it reflects the idea that America used to be theirs, just as Cash felt it used to be his instead of the rich's. The characters presented in the video are all very generic looking people by their basic unbranded cheap looking clothing denoting that they are from the lower class areas featured. They have a mixture of negative body language including sad, serious and depressed faces and in one shot a man in a hood looks away when the camera faces him, showing he is insecure. However no characters are used to represent the richer side, reflecting their faceless value. The low key lighting and grainy style adds to the negative mood of the video, as do the occasional black and white colours which also reflect Cash's iconic use of black clothing to identify with the poor.

Johnny Cash himself is only featured in pictures throughout the video for he died long before it was produced, however there are numerous shots of large pictures of him behind barbed wire. This shot composition highlights both his importance within the video as the main star as well as mirroring his dialogue at the start in which he says he is no "prisoner of wall street".

Technical codes
The video uses slow paced editing to reflect the sad and negative mood. There shots throughout the video also juxtapose between shots of Wall Street and the poor neighbourhoods to highlight the contrast in wealth between the two.
The opening and end shots both have a strong significance to the artist as they both display the cave in which Cash was close to taking his life before changing his mind. Also the camera uses a point-of-view shot for both, entering the cave at the beginning and exiting at the end, just as the artist did. This is because the American depression the video portrays has been used to reflect both Johnny Cash's personal depression and the country's depression during which he lived.
Genre
Despite the country theme of the music and artist which is typically much more positive and up-beat, the video uses a much darker style using the theme of poverty. Also various non-Caucasian races are featured as characters throughout which is uncommon in country music. 
Narrative
The narrative of the song and video differ very much. While the song is clearly about a love story between the singer and a girl who used to love him, the video instead presents the audience with shots of poor and rich American locations. The director has used this idea to play on the lyrics "She used to love me a lot" to make it sound like "She" is America itself and mirror how the artist was once adored by America but was eventually forgotten. There is no clear narrative structure used however the cave scenes at the beginning and end reflect Cash entering the cave facing the fear of suicide before solving the issue by changing his mind and exiting the cave which has some narrative structure to it. The lyrics also match the video through the dialogue at the start which says "I'm no slave to whistle, clock or bell, nor weak eyed prisoner of Wall Street. Let me be easy on the man that's down, let me be square and generous with all and guide me on the long dim trail ahead that stretches upward toward the great divide." By this he means he isn't obsessed with work or money, he just wants to be a good person so that he may go to heaven. This links with the footage because it shows shots of Wall Street and various prisons, reflecting him being a "prisoner of Wall Street" and also highlights the contrast between the poor, for whom he feels pity, and the rich.
Organisations
There is little reference of the record companies, Columbia/Legacy within the video as it was created mainly by the director John Hillcoat. Most of the promotion comes from word of mouth between fans, with the song being part of an exciting legendary missing album, 'Out Among The Stars' which was shelved soon after being made and hasn't come out until recently. 
Audience
The video targets partly a working class audience who can relate well with the characters of the video as they are shown pity which would give the audience a  sense of their problems being noticed. Also film savvy audience who appreciate cinematography behind video. The audience would need to know some information about cash beforehand though, to understand how the videos link with him. This would therefore make big Johnny cash fans a big target audience as well.
Representation
There is a wide variety of issues which are addressed strongly throughout this video including ethnicity, gender, regional identity and most of all class. Class has been portrayed by the negative contrast between the rich and poor through the use of wall street compared to the run-down parts of America, also relating to the comparison of places for the representation of regional identity. This leads onto ethnicity in the video which, unusually for its genre, presents various races including Caucasian as being of equal low wealth as a pose to just the stereotypical ethnic minority of black, Hispanic and native American people. Gender is represented by the fact that no female characters are included in the video, however the reason for this is most likely the director didn't want this to overshadow the point that 'she' is meant to represent America and not a female shown in the clip.
The representation of the artist themselves is through just the photos and some clips of him used as a pose to the actual person due to his death before the video was recorded. The fact he was featured clearly shows it is partly as a promotional tool for his work however also the video's meaning mirrors the struggles Cash went through in his lifetime which is something personal to him, hence the slight highlight of his face during the video.