Vincents Tale Self Portrait Analysis

Vincent’s Tale: Self Portrait — Rage and Redemption

Curator’s note: This is the direct sequel to the Jenny/Screech/Violet trilogy. If you haven’t read those analyses and Sunflowers, start there. Self Portrait assumes you know how the trilogy ended, and what happened to Richard. This is the story of another sunflower trying not to burn – and the cop who learned not to shoot.

Vincents Tale Self Portrait Analysis: The Performance as Prophecy

Before we dig into the lyrics, watch what Ren does in this video. It’s another one-take wonder, filmed in Brighton like Jenny and Screech’s Tales, directed by Samuel Perry-Falvey with actual budget this time.

It opens in a pub. Ren – playing Vincent – is getting drunk, angry, spitting venom at the world. He staggers out into the street where a man sits playing acoustic guitar. The man looks exactly like Vincent Van Gogh. Our Vincent lurches over, grabs the guitar, and steals it. Takes the artist’s instrument and makes it his own.

Then he staggers down an alleyway – not the graffitied corridors of Jenny and Screech’s stories, but close enough to echo them – playing that stolen guitar, singing his rage into the night. He bumps into a couple. Insults the wife. The husband follows him, and what happens next is extraordinary: they fight while Vincent keeps playing guitar. Punches thrown, bottle grabbed, violence erupting, and through it all he’s still performing.

Vincent stabs the man with a broken bottle. The camera floats down the alley to the opening where the tone shifts – reggae rhythm, “the story goes” – and then we see blue lights. Richard appears. Six-foot-three, back at work after what happened with Screech. Vincent on his knees, bruised and battered. Richard cuffs him. Doesn’t shoot. Arrests him.

The whole thing is one continuous shot. No cuts, no safety net, just the spiral playing out in real time until the moment the cycle breaks.

Vincent’s Rage: “Come On, Let’s Have It You Miserable Prick”

“Come on, let’s have it you miserable prick / I will do what I want, I will drink ’til I’m sick / To my stomach, I’m sick of the same boring songs / I am sick of these pavements I find myself on.”

Vincent opens with pure aggression. Not at anyone specific – at everything. At Britain, at poverty, at the repetition of walking the same pavements over and over like Jenny did a thousand times before. He’s angry, drunk, and spoiling for a fight because fighting is the only language he knows.

This is textbook externalised trauma response. When you grow up in conditions that grind you down – poverty, system failures, no way out – the anger has to go somewhere. Some people turn it inward (depression, self-harm, addiction). Others turn it outward (violence, destruction, burning the world that burned them first).

Vincent’s chosen the second path. And he’s made it his identity:

“Great Britain, I hate you, I will say that with pride / It’s my right to be violent when you fed me lies / I’m a rotter, a menace when I want to be / And I’ve worked for that right because nothing comes free.”

That phrase – “I’ve worked for that right” – is devastating. Vincent believes his violence is earned. He’s slaved in “a dull nine to five,” barely alive, and violence is his compensation. His reward for surviving in a system designed to crush him.

The Stolen Guitar: Becoming Van Gogh

In the performance, Vincent literally steals the guitar from a Van Gogh lookalike. That image does so much work.

Van Gogh created beauty while suffering. Painted sunflowers while drowning in mental illness. Died at 37, largely unrecognised, convinced he’d failed. But his art survived. Became iconic. Proved that beauty can emerge from the darkest places.

Vincent steals that legacy. Takes the instrument, makes it his weapon and his voice. He’s both honouring Van Gogh (I too am an artist, I too create from pain) and destroying him (I’ll use this guitar to fight, not just to sing).

That tension – art as salvation vs art as weapon – runs through the whole piece. Vincent performs even while he’s fighting. He can’t separate the two. The guitar stays in his hands through punches, through grabbing the bottle, through stabbing someone. He’s making violence into performance, destruction into art.

And in a twisted way, that’s exactly what Ren’s doing. Taking real trauma, real violence, real system failures and turning them into music that forces us to witness. Art from horror. Van Gogh’s sunflowers growing in concrete, then burning.

Great Britain, I Loathe You: The Class War Made Explicit

“I have slaved all my life in a dull nine to five / I just rinse and repeat while I’m barely alive / Great Britain, I loathe you with murderous glee / I will do to this country what you’ve done to me / Destroy.”

This isn’t abstract rage. This is class consciousness weaponised. Vincent knows exactly who’s to blame for his circumstances. The system that promised opportunity and delivered grinding poverty. The “corporate machines” from Sunflowers, the structures that plant seeds where grass never grows.

“I want to tear apart these buildings / From these cinder blocks they stand / Leave this town in dust and rubble / Make some trouble with my hands.”

He wants to destroy what destroyed him. Burn it all down. And he’s self-aware about it: “I won’t lie, I’m fucking wasted / But I wasted all my youth / And I stay so damn complacent, getting wasted is my truth.”

Vincent knows he’s self-destructing. Knows the drinking and the violence are killing him. But what else has he got? What other form of power? What other way to express the rage?

“So my style of self-expression is a fist into the gut / It’s throwing up upon these pavements / Shut your fucking mouth, you slut.”

Self-expression through violence. Art through destruction. It’s the only language he’s been taught.

The Street Fight: Choreographed Chaos

“Now the rules of the street fight are simple / It’s pretty much anything goes / Keep in the street, pretty firm on your feet / It pays to be sweet on your toes.”

Watch the performance here. The fight is theatrical, choreographed, brutal. Ren’s throwing actual punches while playing guitar, the husband retaliating, both of them locked in this dance of violence that Vincent initiated by insulting the man’s wife.

“Throw a punch, he swallow it, follow it / Grab the collar, quick hollow tip like karate kick / Martial art master, spark a bitch / Park a fist on the landing strip / Carnage, it finds the cartilage.”

The language becomes percussive, rapid-fire, matching the physicality. And then:

“Kill, Vincent wanna kill, who blood gets spilled / Double tap, rude boy, kill or be killed / Do it for the fun, blood, do it for the thrill / Blue lights, boy, run, blue lights, boy, chill.”

Vincent grabs the broken bottle. Crosses the line from drunk idiot to attempted murderer. And the camera captures it all – the stabbing, the panic, the realisation that he’s just done something irreversible.

This is Screech’s moment. The knife, the violence, the split-second that changes everything. Except Vincent doesn’t kill Jenny. He stabs some random bloke he picked a fight with because he’s self-destructing and taking the world down with him.

The Systemic Critique: Cannon Fodder and Corporate Machines

After the violence, the tone shifts. The camera floats, the rhythm goes reggae, and Ren steps back to give us context:

“So it goes in the absence of the light / The devils sow a seed in idle minds / Vincent was shaken, run from the law / Hide from the bacon, crouch on the floor / The call to war made him hate the world, the world / Spits on him, rapes him, hits him, kicks him / When he’s down and that shapes him.”

Vincent didn’t become this way by accident. The world made him. Spat on him, raped him (metaphorically – violated, abused by systems), kicked him when he was down, and shaped him into exactly what we’re watching: a weapon pointed at himself and everyone around him.

“Where greedy eat the poor, a holy war, the chosen prosper / But some are never chosen, they stay frozen in the locker / Destined to survive in nine to five and watch the clock.”

This is the same critique from Sunflowers, but sharper now. The class divide isn’t subtle. The chosen prosper. The unchosen stay frozen, destined to waste their lives in meaningless jobs, watching the clock, numbing themselves however they can.

“Don’t think about reality, my little happy shopper / A brand-new show on Netflix to distract you from the horror / And swallow all your morals for a retweet or a follow / And shadow-ban the problem, man, a soul sold for a dollar.”

Vincent’s rage isn’t just personal. It’s political. He sees the system clearly: distraction, numbing, suppression of dissent, souls commodified for social media engagement. And what’s the point of resistance when you’re already “cannon fodder”?

“And fuck it, Vincent cooked to boiling point, he’s cannon fodder / So what’s the use in running, he’s already in the locker?”

Cannon fodder. Expendable. Already dead, just hasn’t stopped moving yet. That’s how Vincent sees himself. That’s why he’s careless with his actions, why he picks fights, why he stabs someone over an insult. If you’re already condemned, why not go out with noise?

Richard Returns: Tormented by the Past

“Richard was an officer who stood at six foot three / Was his first day back at work after a time of absent leave / Working London on the night shift, what he didn’t think he’d see / Was a boy with a guitar, bruised and battered on his knees.”

There it is. The parallel structure from Screech’s Tale, but changed. Richard took leave after shooting Screech – occupational trauma, PTSD, the weight of killing a fourteen-year-old boy who reminded him of every kid he’d ever tried to help.

And now he’s back. First shift. And he encounters Vincent: another angry kid, another product of the same system, another sunflower wilting in the drought. But this time:

“But Richard lived in caution now, tormented by his past / Not so quick to find a trigger, ‘Not so fast.'”

Richard learned. The trauma changed him. He’s cautious where he used to be reactive, hesitant where he used to be certain. Shooting Screech broke something in him, and that breaking made him better at his job. More careful. More aware of the cost.

“But Richard was a righteous man who lived inside the law / So he leapt upon poor Vincent and he cuffed him to the floor.”

He arrests Vincent. Doesn’t shoot him despite having cause (Vincent just stabbed someone). Uses force, yes, but controlled force. Vincent lives. Gets arrested, charged, processed through the system. But he lives.

That’s the redemption. Not Richard forgiving himself – the song doesn’t suggest he has. But Richard learning from the trauma, letting it change his behaviour, making a different choice when faced with another angry kid who could easily have died.

The Clinical Reality: Two Sides of the Same Coin

I spent three decades working in mental health, and Vincent’s presentation is textbook externalised trauma with substance abuse. Everything in his environment taught him that violence is currency, anger is strength, and self-destruction is the only form of control available to people like him.

The drinking, the rage, the deliberate provocation – these aren’t character flaws. They’re survival mechanisms that stopped working. Vincent’s trying to feel powerful in a world that’s spent his entire life making him powerless. And the only power he can access is destructive.

What’s interesting is that Richard likely came from similar circumstances. The song doesn’t give us Richard’s backstory, but the empathy Ren shows him suggests he’s not that different from Vincent or Screech. Working-class kid who joined the police as a way out, maybe. Someone who could have easily ended up on the other side of the uniform.

And that’s what makes shooting Screech so devastating for him. It wasn’t just killing a kid. It was killing a version of himself. Killing the person he could have become if circumstances had been slightly different.

That’s why Richard hesitates with Vincent. Why he’s “tormented by his past.” Because he recognises Vincent the same way he recognised Screech: as cannon fodder, as someone the system chewed up and spat out, as someone who never had a real chance.

The difference is Richard gets to choose how he responds. And this time, he chooses arrest over execution. Vincent lives to see a cell, maybe treatment, maybe (if the system actually functioned) some kind of intervention that could break the cycle.

I’m not optimistic about Vincent’s prospects in custody. The criminal justice system isn’t designed to heal people like him. But he’s alive. That’s something. That’s the smallest possible version of hope.

Vincent as Van Gogh: The Artist Who Couldn’t Escape

Vincent Van Gogh painted sunflowers while battling mental illness. Created beauty while suffering. Died young, convinced he’d failed, leaving behind work that would outlive him by centuries.

Ren’s Vincent is doing something similar: creating art (the stolen guitar, the performance even during violence) while self-destructing. He can’t separate the two. The guitar stays in his hands through the fight because that’s who he is – someone trying to make meaning out of chaos, trying to perform his way through trauma, trying to turn his pain into something that matters.

But unlike Van Gogh, Vincent doesn’t get to finish his work. He gets arrested mid-performance. The art is interrupted by consequence. The stolen guitar is evidence now, not instrument.

That interruption is both tragedy and mercy. Tragedy because Vincent’s potential – whatever he could have become if the system hadn’t failed him – gets cut short. Mercy because he doesn’t die. Screech died. Jenny died. Violet died. Vincent lives, even if living means a cell.

The Cycle Breaks (Sort Of)

Self Portrait doesn’t offer easy redemption for anyone. Vincent’s still a violent drunk who just stabbed someone. Richard’s still traumatised by killing Screech. The systems that create Vincents and Screeches are still grinding along, producing more cannon fodder, more sunflowers in drought.

But something shifted. Richard learned. Made a different choice. Vincent survives because someone who’d already made the worst mistake possible decided not to make it again.

That’s not salvation. That’s the bare minimum of harm reduction. But in the world of these songs – Jenny dead on concrete, Screech shot in the chest, Violet murdered while pregnant, twins destroying each other – the bare minimum feels almost revolutionary.

Vincent gets cuffed instead of killed. That’s the cycle breaking. Not fixed, not healed, not resolved. Just… broken. The trajectory that led from Violet’s father to Violet to Jenny and Screech – that pattern of violence reproducing itself across generations – gets interrupted.

Richard is the interruption. His trauma, as much as it’s destroyed him, made him the person who could see Vincent and hesitate. Who could remember Screech and choose differently.

There’s something almost hopeful in that. Even though Vincent’s prospects are grim, even though Richard’s still broken, even though the systems haven’t changed – one cop, one time, made one different choice. And one angry kid lived.

Why This Feels Like Epilogue and Prologue Simultaneously

Self Portrait closes the immediate arc of the Tales cycle. We’ve followed the trajectory from Violet’s murder to her twins’ deaths to Richard’s trauma to Vincent’s arrest. The direct line of consequence has ended.

But it’s also opening something new. There’s Richard’s Tale coming – his backstory, presumably, showing us how he became the cop who shot Screech and then learned from it. There might be more Vincent, showing us what happens in custody, whether intervention works, whether sunflowers can grow in cells.

The Tales aren’t finished. They’re expanding. And that makes sense because this is how trauma actually works: it doesn’t resolve neatly, doesn’t end with closure, doesn’t offer catharsis. It ripples outward, touches everyone in proximity, creates new patterns even as old ones break.

Vincent stealing Van Gogh’s guitar and using it to fight – that’s the perfect metaphor for how trauma gets inherited and transformed. The beauty (guitar, art, hope) gets weaponised (violence, destruction, rage). And somehow, in Ren’s hands, that weaponised beauty becomes the thing that helps us understand how we got here.

Self Portrait is Vincent’s self-portrait, yes. But it’s also Britain’s self-portrait. A country that creates cannon fodder, calls it justice, and acts surprised when the fodder fights back.

At least Vincent lived long enough to be cuffed. At least Richard lived through the trauma enough to choose differently. At least the cycle broke, even if only by the smallest possible margin.

In the world of these songs, that counts as hope.