The city is not just a physical landscape, buy more about it is also a soundscape. The sound of the city is familiar to us; the honking horns, buy more about the crashing of cars, the dinging street cross walks, the noisy chatter of pedestrian areas… The city soundscape is also made of the music that fills the physical portion. The two overlap and influence each other. In realizing one, we realize the other. In our visually influenced society we increasingly are under the sway of music videos as ways for us to understand both the soundscape and the landscape of the city.

The Ford Crown Victoria looks like a rental car, on loan to someone traveling from one city to the next. It is one of those nondescript vehicles seen permeating the streets of downtown Los Angeles. We see the car from the front, taking it in with our eyes when it begins to roll backwards. The band’s lyrics and steady beat have already set in, making the visual experience even more haunting. The blue gray tone of the video denotes the mood as does the first word; wrong.

We are shown the inside of the vehicle and then the body laid inert on his side. Rolling backwards through the blue tinged night the car crashes into its first obstacle, a parked car. The body jolts awake and rises. He wears a completely impersonal mask that is composed of blank features. Drowsy and disorientated the body nods around attempting to make sense of his situation as the car continue to rolls backwards through oncoming traffic. What follows is the horrifying realization that he is not in control, and that worse, his destiny is going backwards, the wrong way. Bound by the cheap constraints of duct tape he is unable to rectify his situation in the least.

Depeche Mode, whose synth-pop music beats steadily throughout the video only appears briefly in the video. They gaze with detachment at the car as it moves backwards. The song is a single off their latest album Sounds of the Universe, and the video has been awarded several prominent awards for being one of the best videos of 2009 when it was first released.

The noir aspects of this video are apparent in the lack of control the protagonist has and in the hurrying velocity towards the inevitable crash. The character escapes his binds only to be run into by another vehicle, his situation is utterly hopeless from beginning to end.

Noir is about not only the city, which is always a secondary character in its world, but also the overarching influence of fate. Within the world of Noir there is no escaping fate. The terror of fate is apparent in every city. The shift from countryside to city increased the rate of surplus along with market exchange. Everything within the city moves at an increasing speed and so too does our destiny within capitalist society. Put into the capitalist cycle of exchange we produce, we consume, and then we die. Within the black and white tinged world of noir there is no escaping the path set before us no matter neither our nihilistic value systems nor our acts of desperation.

The lyrics state the uncontrollable nature of fate. Born under the wrong sign, astrologically, in the wrong house, the song states the horror of birth. The genetic lottery of society has doomed the singer. Indeed his choices are meager, and when he does make them he uses the “wrong method with the wrong technique.”

What makes the video particularly horrifying is the driver’s inability to escape his fate within a very personal space. The city, especially a new city like Los Angeles, has been structured around the use of the automobile. A large portion of time is spent within one’s vehicle. People adopt the insides of their cars as their own personal space with their own personal music and personal touches of flair; bumper stickers, ornaments, and accoutrements. Cars are part of one’s personal identity, not only with their interiors but the make and model of the car itself is a marker of contemporary status. The protagonist is a voyeur to his demise in his own personal space.

Cars are markers of independence and mobility within capitalist society. They are the commodity which brings you to other commodities. Cars play a huge role in the unpaid labor of the masses as they move to and fro from location to location (work, school, shopping places, friend’s abodes, etc.) Stripped of control over this very personal commodity the horror of this video is apparent. No longer does the driver own the car, the car owns him taking him according to its own logic through the landscape and to his eventual crash.

See Depeche Mode’s “Wrong” here

I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy
I took the wrong road
That led to the wrong tendencies
I was in the wrong place
At the wrong time
For the wrong reason
And the wrong rhyme
On the wrong day
Of the wrong week
I used the wrong method
With the wrong technique

Wrong
Wrong

There’s something wrong with me chemically
Something wrong with me inherently
The wrong mix
In the wrong genes
I reached the wrong ends
By the wrong means
It was the wrong plan
In the wrong hands
The wrong theory for the wrong man
The wrong eyes
On the wrong prize
The wrong questions with the wrong replies

Wrong
Wrong

I was marching to the wrong drum
With the wrong scum
Pissing out the wrong energy
Using all the wrong lines
And the wrong signs
With the wrong intensity
I was on the wrong page
Of the wrong book
With the wrong rendition
Of the wrong look
With the wrong moon
Every wrong night
With the wrong tune played
Till it sounded right, yeah

Wrong
Wrong

Too long…

I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy
I took the wrong road
That led to the wrong tendencies
I was in the wrong place
At the wrong time
For the wrong reason
And the wrong rhyme
On the wrong day
Of the wrong week
I used the wrong method
With the wrong technique

Wrong