'If You Tolerate This...＂ Manic Street Preachers - 'If You Tolerate This...＂ Manic Street Preachers

What this video is

Released on 24 August 1998 as the lead single from 'This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours', this video arrives at the apex of Manic Street Preachers' mainstream commercial breakthrough, at a moment when post-Britpop British rock was turning away from the hedonistic irony of the mid-1990s towards earnest political engagement. The song's grounding in Spanish Civil War history — specifically the Welsh volunteers of the…

Why it matters

A landmark of late-1990s British alternative rock and the post-Britpop political turn: the video codifies a mode of high-concept, historically grounded music video production in which aesthetic choices (clinical brightness, Kubrickian space, domestic surrealism) carry equal ideological weight to…

The director

Andrew John Whiston (born 4 January 1964), known professionally as W.I.Z., is an English director of music videos and films. Described by the BFI as one of the greatest ever British music video directors, he has over 150 directing credits spanning Massive…