In depth analysis of Burn the Witch (with screenshots).

Burn the Witch (Radiohead song) "Burn the Witch" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. The song centers around the idea that the band wanted to raise awareness about Europe’s refugee crisis and the “blaming of different people… the blaming of Muslims and the negativity".

Type: Narrative; during the video, an inspector is greeted by a town mayor and invited to see a series of unsettling sights, culminating in the unveiling of a wicker man. The mayor urges the inspector to climb into the wicker man, whereupon he is locked inside as a human sacrifice and the wicker man is set on fire. As the flames gather, the townspeople turn their backs and wave goodbye to the camera. After the song ends, the inspector escapes among the trees.

Camera: A lot of establishing shots to see the full scene and what the people are doing - we're seeing the full story. There's also use of long shots and mid-shots, which enable us to see what the characters are wearing, we can probably even tell who they are from wearing the costumes.  

Mis-en-scene:    In the music video, we can see the video open up with a bird scene and it also opens up with a traditional British village. The outsider, who is on the left, with the clipboard and suit, represents urbanism and central authority, whereas the insider, who is on the right, represents traditional authority and ruralism. Traditionally, women have no power, and if a woman does indeed have power, she becomes the 'witch' and therefore gets burned. We can see that they take on this traditional approach where they all wear traditional clothes and have the women tied up to a tree for being a "witch" 

Exploitation of foreign workers is represented by polytunnels of tomato pickers who appear to be different and don't feature in the visitation of the Mayor. 

Social exclusion is represented by the painting of the red cross, which back in the medieval times, it was marked to represent a plague victim

We can also see adaptations of different forms of intertextuality here, for example: the music video takes inspiration from The Trumptonshire Trilogy (1966 - 1969) Trumpton is a stop-motion children's television series from the producer Gordon Murray. First shown on the BBC from January to March 1967, it was the second series in the Trumptonshire trilogy, which comprised Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley. Trumptonshire was created using stop motion animation and actual 3D scaled down models.

Furthermore, the music video also takes inspiration from a classic horror movie The Wicker man (1973) which centers on the visit of Police Sergeant Neil Howie to the isolated island of Summerisle, in search of a missing girl. Howie, a devout Christian, is appalled to find that the inhabitants of the island have abandoned Christianity and now practice a form of Celtic paganism. Paul Giovanni composed the film score. This therefore creates intertextuality.