Aditya Chikka

Professor Flores

ENG 1201

8 November 2020.

Long Live the King

“Just a puppet on a lowly string / Oh who would ever want to be king?”, this line from the

popular Coldplay song “Viva La Vida” is about the strife of a king whose country is in a revolution. This

popular song was released in 2008 accompanied by a music video, and a subsequent video on the same

song was released in 2011, called the Anton Corbijn version. Aside from these two versions, there are

several other covers of the song, mostly instrumental without any of the lyrics. While both the original

video by Coldplay and the Anton Corbijn video have the same basic meaning, the Anton Corbijn video

goes into more detail visually in how the leader is affected by the unnerve of being a ruler on the brink of

a revolution.

The Corbijn version does more in the way of giving a visual story in the sense of pushing through

its claim. In the Corbijn version of the music video, the setting and the character(s) make a large

difference in what the story is trying to convey. In the Corbijn version, you see the king walking around

solemnly and looking around at all sorts of things, such as a reflection of himself in a pond, as well as

different places to hang up a painting. This painting is of course of the French Revolution as the lyrics

would imply. The original version, however, lacks a large majority of the visual stimuli that are found in

the Corbijn version. In the original version, a majority of the video is of a member of Coldplay singing

the song with a background of melding colors with a cracked texture put over the top of the video with a

low enough opacity so you can still see the people. The use of different settings and the king as the main

platform to push the message in the Corbijn version allows for the audience to see the effects of being a

“puppet king” on the king, and how the oncoming revolution harms him with little provocation directly
by him, not as a result of the puppeteers. The original version has very little in the way of visual stimuli,

unlike the Corbijn version, leaving most of the interpretation of what is happening to the audience via the

lyrics. The message being that “puppet kings” will pay the consequences for being unloyal to the people,

hence the revolution. This makes a difference, as whichever you watch, will lead you to interpret

differently about the message, and who you sympathize with, either the king or the people. The visual

stimuli and the lyrics work well as rhetorical appeals to further their meanings.

Rhetorical appeals are used quite often in music videos, with the majority of them seeming to use

pathos, and very few using logos, and even less using ethos. Both music videos, the original and the

Corbijn use pathos, while there is practically no use of ethos or logos in either video. The original almost

strictly uses pathos in the lyrics, with very little if any in the actual video. The Corbijn version has a

strong use of pathos in the music video, as well as the use of it in the lyrics. Video wise, the Corbijn

version pulls at the emotions of the audience as the king walks around, seemingly contemplating life and

his decisions, as well as his place in the world. The video ends with the king staring off into the horizon

on a cliff with three people who, if the lyrics match the visuals, are missionaries of his kingdom. These

appeal to the sympathy of the audience, in an attempt to make them feel bad for the king and push their

claim that he is at fault for something he couldn’t control. While this has strong pathos, the lyrics also

have strong pathos. In lines such as the one used previously, “And I discovered that my castles stand

/ Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand”, and “Revolutionaries wait / For my head on a silver plate”,

these lines push the idea of sympathy for the king when coupled with the visuals of the Corbijn version,

but alone they only emphasize the feelings of resentment towards the king. This implies two different

messages depending on the music video watched. The messages are mostly catered to people of the

millennial age group, as that seems to be the demographic of Coldplay. The audience comes from a

multitude of socioeconomic backgrounds but specifically around the millennial generation. The use of

pathos allows for the audience to be effectively swayed to believe in the claim being made in the two

videos.
 While both videos are on the same song, each video gives off a different claim. These differences

mainly come from the visuals and provide sufficient differences to give off their own claims. The original

sympathizing with the revolutionaries against the tyrannical king, and the Corbjin version sympathizing

with the “puppet king” and how he is afflicted with grief due to the hatred of the people. To conclude, the

use of pathos and differences in the videos leads to the differences and claims, playing off two sides of

the same coin, and as for the leader’s life he ends with “Never an honest word / But that was when I ruled

the world”.
 Works Cited

Coldplay. Coldplay - Viva La Vida (Official Video). Youtube, 4 Aug. 2008,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE. 5 Nov. 2020.

Coldplay. Coldplay - Viva La Vida (Anton Corbijn Version). Youtube, 30 Nov. 2011,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kVxpsi1XQ4. 5 Nov. 2020.