
The song Jesus of Suburbia is a grunge song by Green Day that transitions from someone finding out that they hate their life and that they are alone in the world, to running away all together.  The intended audience of the video is people in the world who feel like they have nothing left.  The song and video are actually broken into five different parts however, it can be viewed in two halves.  The first half describes who the Jesus of Suburbia is.  It describes him as a kid who does not fit in anywhere he goes and how he comes to realize that.  The second half shows how he starts to decide to run away from home and then how he acts upon it.  Within these two halves, there are different motifs.  The first motif shows an aggressive character that does not like what his life is and then transitions into the second motif showing this young man becoming more depressed than aggressive and giving up on life then, running away to an unknown place. 

The first motif observed is a very aggressive feature.  A young man is acting very aggressively towards a girl and other characters.  There is a lot of color contrast in each character between their hair and make up to represent that stereotypical grunge look.  This can be seen in the first scene where there is a very large group of people under a bridge.  The characters look rude, aggressive, and relatively up to no good.  This reinforces the stereotype of grunge people just being punks.  They interaction between the people is interesting in the first part as everyone seems to get along together except this one kid that does not really fit in anywhere he goes.  An example of this is when the kid gets in a fight with someone at a gas station and nobody seems to care that he is getting beat up.  This leads to an evolution in the video to where we find this kid alone in a bathroom of the gas station destroying the walls with graffiti as sort of a release for him.  Once again there is a lot of contrast between the colors of the paint he uses as well as the wall which represents the diversity there is in society.    

The second motif is a sorrow, lonely feeling.  The video transitions from a large group of people treating a young kid as an outcast to that same kid being alone.  The motif changes in the video at a scene when the music stops and the kid is seen arguing with his mother.  They are arguing about how bad life is for them.  The young kid obviously does not get along with his mother which just reinforces the idea that he is alone in the world.  Also there is no father present so we can infer that he was never in the boys life.  When the argument is over, the boy is alone in his room contemplating what is going on in his life.  Meanwhile, we see people repainting the walls of the bathroom where all the graffiti was which, in a way, is displaying a fresh start for the kid.  A transition again occurs when he goes back to the now cleaned bathroom and signs “Saint Jimmy” with the blood of his hand which is an example of how he has given up and is moving on.  The kid, then later in the video, gets in a car and it appears as if he is about drive away.  His mother makes another appearance and it seems as if he changes his mind and wants to stay.  They hug and it is obvious that both of them are emotionally hurting.  It is a peaceful moment in the video but, he once again becomes hostile and gets in the car and leaves.  The destination is uncertain but the boy obviously feels a victim to society.  

The target audience of this video is people who feel like they are alone in the world.  This is shown through a young man, which the video is about, figuring out he is alone.  You can see a clear transition between two motifs in this music video.  The transition goes from this young kid who is aggressive and hostile to the same young kid just feeling alone in the world with nowhere to go, then to the kid running away to an unknown destination.  The video shows a very strong significance to the song as the emotions within the video change with the motif.  The music itself, as well as the video, sounds aggressive up until the point where the kid is arguing with his mother.  Then the music becomes more sorrow and lonely sounding.  Once he decides to run away, the song ends with the music having a hopeful tone and you can see the car driving away in the distance. 
