Linkin Park - Breaking the Habit (Music Video Analysis)

Looking at a video for Breaking the Habit on YouTube, or more specifically the comments for it, it occurred to me that what the song is about might not necessarily be common knowledge to everybody. Like any quick-thinking half-British half-Japanese 16-year-old, I instantly leapt to the nearest (and most easily findable) blog site to publish my thoughts for the e-community to see the world over. In this analysis I hope to shed some light on what is a dark and less than pleasant representation of reality. Ladies and gentlemen - Breaking the Habit.

So, we start off with an establishing shot of a dingy industrial city. The use of cartoon allows for some interesting surreal effects; cogs and pipes dance before one's eyes. As if the grime of industry weren't unpleasant enough, the audience now has to deal with nightmarish displays of a city gone wrong.

Citizens disconsolately tread the streets, looking like insignificant ants thanks to the wide-shot. The anime-style ghostly images of Chester Bennington flash before your eyes. It is night, with all its connotations of darkness, evil and obfuscation of truth. A body has been discovered, its previous occupant having made a considerable dent in the top of a car, and just to top it off are those four disturbing minor notes in the background which are constantly, constantly descending. One cannot help but wonder why nobody is dancing around in the street singing It's a Beautiful World.

The dystopian setting is now set. The corpse, belonging to Monsieur Bennington, literally appears to 'give up the ghost', which then leads us through gritty ventilation ducts to see the insides of various rooms. Why must it sneak into these rooms through the ventilation when it could so easily go through the door?

Because the door is locked. Because the person who locked it doesn't want you to see.

Wait. I'm getting ahead of the song here. Let's backtrack.

Here is the first verse.

Memories consume
Like opening the wounds
I'm picking me apart again

You all assume
I'm safe here in my room
Unless I try to start again

Let's take the first three lines, because they are a complete idea in themselves. Haven't you ever got so lost in your own memories that you feel as though you are living them again? You can't live in the present while you're still thinking about the past. People who have regrets, who have guilt intrinsically linked to these memories, will pick at them consistently. Memories make us what we are. Is it beginning to make sense now?

The second part seems clear enough, save for 'Unless I try to start again'. 'Start what again?', you may ask. What, you think somebody obsesses over their past mistakes and their present condition just once and then decides to shape up? That's the Habit mentioned in the song; the obsession with one's imperfections; the hate for one's own regrets, guilt, weakness, whatever it may be.

Through this, Bennington's ghost presents us with a man at a desk, emanating smoke that looks much like Bennington's spirit. The vocalist's face appears to us in the smoke, again juxtaposed against cogs and pipes, eyes screwed shut in an expression of pain. In a sense, Bennington acts two roles. Not only does he sing his own song but he is singing it for the people he shows to us, both narrating and explaining simultaneously. This is their song, as you can tell from the way he constantly appears around them, in their smoke and in their walls - he's just singing it for them. This is conclusively displayed in Bennington's ghostly face fleetingly superimposing itself on the girl's face as she speaks - their lips sych perfectly.

Then, just as the bridge begins, we have an iconic image; a shattering mirror. A mirror is so often used as a metaphor for oneself; after all, one doesn't look one's reflection in the eye. You look yourself in the eye. Your reflection is you, and when you break it, that is a classic denial of everything you are. You don't want to be yourself. Can you imagine what mental torture these people are going through - the feeling of entrapment, of self-hate?

I don't want to be the one
The battles always choose
'Cuz inside I realise
That I'm the one confused

Of course, the last thing you want when you have problems is more problems... but the very fact that you are trapped inside a self you hate means there will always be more problems. The metaphorical 'battles' that Linkin reference here are the battles within oneself - the struggles held in your psyche against yourself. When you hate something it's only inevitable that you'll attack it, but what happens when you hate yourself? These people are confused because they are trapped in a vicious circle.

1) I hate myself.
2) I attack things I hate.
3) I hate myself for attacking myself.

I think you can see how it operates from there on.

This vicious circle is, pure and simple, the all-important Habit. Why would the song be about breaking something that was easy to break? This is Linkin Park; we're talking major emotional strife here. But there's one more reason explaining why the Habit is so hard to break...

The girl, a teenager in a room that is symbolically disarrayed and littered with shards of glass, writes 'I'm nothing'. This is truly how she sees herself; her self-esteem is so phenomenally low that she is no longer. She has lost so much of herself that she doesn't even care about the glass shard she holds, cutting into her hand; this is another attack against herself.

Then we reach the emotionally charged chorus.

I don't know what's worth fighting for
Or why I have to scream
I don't know why I instigate
And say what I don't mean

I don't know how I got this way
I know it's not alright
So I'm breaking the habit
Tonight

Ghost Chester hurls us mercilessly onward through ventilation shafts to a room where the desk man comes back from work, loosening his tie and then opening his briefcase. We don't see what's in the briefcase - yet. The smoke we first saw him with is a clue, though, so don't forget the desk man just yet. He presents a vital component of the Habit.

There are truly disturbing sights that flash momentarily before our eyes - a red face screams in anguish, head thrown back and jaw distended to a disturbing extent, carrying on the theme of blood from the girl (the fact that it first flashes on the word 'scream' makes it all the more effective as it registers in both the visual and aural senses). It continues in the tomatoes a dishevelled woman throws at the man in the door - this is the first external attack we have seen.

However symbolic, the red is in all cases indexically linked to blood. It is perhaps rather cliched, subscribing to the stereotype of the 'emo' genre that Linkin Park is connected with and all the ideas of self-harm that go along with it, but its main point is undoubtedly to show in raw, uncompromising terms the way these people are feeling. Frustration. Anger. Hate. Violence. Blood. So much of the blood we see in the media is spilt out of hate - whether it be the prostitute serial-killer or any one of uncountable terrorist attacks - that we make the connection between HATE/BLOOD automatically on a subconscious level.

The whole chorus is about how frustration can push us to and beyond the point where we have no control. The characters Ghost Chester presents to us can't bring themselves to realise that they are in serious denial. It is a common reaction to a threat you feel you can't deal with... but then, how can these people break the Habit if they don't know they're locked into it? As has been said before, part of the solution is admitting there is a problem.

Ghost Chester treats us to more images of his tortured face singing the lyrics - a direct appeal to our emotions. Like the blood, this is a direct attempt to subconsciously activate emotions, and what do we convey emotion with? Well, mostly with body language of course, but the face is what we look at and what we learn to read the best. The image of his tortured features along with the equally pained singing once again links the visual to the aural, getting across the suffering the characters are going through.

Then begins the second verse.

Clutching my cure
I tightly lock the door
I try to catch my breath again

I've hurt much more
Than any time before
I have no options left again

An interesting thing occurs here. Ghost Chester presents to us the mirror from before flying back together, rebuilding itself. Everything happens backwards - the girl unbreaks the mirror, uncuts her hand, unsmears the 'I'm nothing' paper with blood... unsheds a tear from a glittering eye. Although this may appear completely off the wall, it can be explained in this way.

The second verse is what happens just before the first one. What's the cure? Why doesn't it work? Well, that cure is supposedly solitude, being alone and away from all those people who want to hurt you, but in reality that just leads on to the second part of the verse. Now that flight is finished, you remember why it was you ran, and the Habit begins again. In reality, loneliness is the worst cure, although it could hardly be better to hang around one's antagonists. There are no options: nobody to go to.

The desk man makes a dramatic return. His blood-red eye slowly closes; the veins in his face are bulging... and then we are finally shown his part in the Habit: a hypodermic needle with some evil-looking green liquid dripping from it. That's why the smoke has been Ghost Chester's vehicle through the city: the smoke of cigarettes, of addiction.

The Habit is now three things; 1) a vicious cycle, 2) denial, and 3) ...addiction. No matter how foolish it might sound, there are those who like hurting themselves, be it physically or mentally. I actually missed out a step from the vicious cycle, so let me fill it in.

1) I hate myself.
2) I attack things I hate.
3) I feel good for punishing my hatred.
4) Later, after the reward fades, I hate myself for attacking myself.

Not unlike victims of anorexia, an emotional reward is gained for punishing the self that the victim hates. After all, nobody would do anything without reward of some kind - true altruism does not exist. Self-pity and self-harm are the easy way out: again, part of the denial aspect. Believe it or not, fear of how hard it would be to pull oneself back together can seem scarier than the fear of further self-harm.

I'll paint it on the walls
'Cuz I'm the one at fault
I'll never fight again
And this is how it ends

Ghost Chester then re-enters his body and unfalls back to the rooftop. Why is Linkin doing it again? They already did the rewinding thing; surely they don't expect that you won't remember that... ah, wait. Remember. Memories. Is the music video somehow returning to its beginning?

Of course, when we suffer we wish that we could return to better times... but life isn't like a music video. Time waits for no-one.

I'll never fight again... and this is how it ends.

Pink Floyd suddenly springs to mind here, with an alternate but synonymous lyric:

Goodbye, cruel world... I'm leaving you today. Goodbye... goodbye... goodbye.

'Send not to know for whom the bell tolls - it tolls for thee.' That means, more or less; 'every death kills you too'. Linkin Park made this song for a reason.

You must make of it what you will.