Media Language Essay: The Rolling Stones - Waiting on a Friend

Media Language Essay

I’ve chosen to analyse the music video for ‘Waiting on a Friend’ by The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones are a British rock band that formed in 1962 and are still together today, despite their many changing line-ups.  The Rolling Stones currently consist of original members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and newest member Ronnie Wood, who has been working with the band since 1976. ‘Waiting on a Friend’ was originally recorded in the later years of 1972/early 1973, when Mick Taylor was still a member of the band. The single was re-worked in 1981, with additional lyrics that were considered for the possibility of a future music video, which made the video for ‘waiting on a friend’ the first promotional video by the Rolling Stones to appear on the emerging MTV channel, which was established in 1981. Michael Lindsay-Hogg  - who directed a number of videos for The Beatles and Wings - directed the video. He had worked with the Stones on previous projects and succeeded in creating a popular video for the MTV channel as ‘waiting on a friend’ was well received by the public. 

Every medium has its own language that it uses to communicate meaning. For example, music videos use written and the language of moving image and sound. They are called languages because they use familiar codes and conventions that are largely understood by the audience.

Semiotics is the science of signs. According to Charles Sanders Peirce (1931), who said ‘we think only in signs’, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours, flavours, acts or objects; but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. This is also known as connotation and denotation. Peirce also said ‘Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as sign’. Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets is as signifying something or standing for something other than its true self. We interpret things as signs unconsciously. This meaningful use of signs is the core of the concerns of semiotics. A sign is made up of: 

• a signifier – the form which the sign takes (the signs true self/denotation)

• the signified – the concept it represents (the interpretation/connotation)

Peirce believes that there are 3 types of signs:

• Icon/Iconic: A mode in which the denotation is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified. This means that it would be similar in the sense that it possesses some of its qualities (e.g. onomatopoeia, metaphors, portraits, ‘realistic’ sounds).

• Index/indexical: A mode in which the signifier is not subjective but is directly connected to the signified in some way (e.g. medical symptoms: pain, a rash, pulse-rate).

• Symbol/symbolic: A mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but is fundamentally random or purely conventional; so the relationship must be learnt (e.g. language, letter, vocabulary, phrases, numbers, Morse code, traffic lights).

Semiotics are used in every media text, and are therefore visible in the video for ‘Waiting on a Friend’. There is an endless amount of examples, such as the tall, urban buildings which connotes New York and the cigarette and shaggy clothing Keith Richard’s is wearing which connotes that he is a rock star. One could say Mick Jagger is an iconic sign as he is signified in today’s media a lot, particularly his movements and facial expressions.

Roland Barthes (1967) noted that the model of the sign focused on denotation at the expense of connotation and that it was left to the subsequent theorists to offer an account of this important dimension of meaning. He argued that in photography connotation can be distinguished from denotation in an analytic manner. In the music video I agree with this to be true as you can take denotation from almost anything in the video, such as the drinks in the bar which connotes that the Rolling Stones are still into the behaviours of stereotypical rock stars and the behaviours that they mention in the lyrics.

Roland Barthes also refers to another semiotic called a myth. He says that myths are the dominant ideologies of our time, for example, if we were to see a red light the myth would be the action to stop, as that is the dominant connotation that is taken from the denotation. Fiske and Hartley (1982) refer to denotation and connotation as the 1st and 2nd orders of signification, which are combined to produce ideology – which they describe as a third order of signification.  The third order of signification behind this video would be to value friendships over your vices, which is understood through the media language, such as the song and the visual images. The shot at the end where the band are all in the bar enjoying a drink together would be the denotation, the connotation would be that they are all friends enjoying each other’s company while enjoying some alcohol, the third order of signification would be that you should enjoy your time and your interests with your friends.