Tuesday 23 September 2014

RESEARCH FOR MUSIC VIDEO: Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey wrote about media and we have applied her theory to music videos. She said:

 “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly.”  

This quote explains how women are seen as sexual objects by men and men also have more power and should be the one to look at women while women are just looked at. The “image” is of males being very sexual and passive towards women.


I have analyzed 2 music videos and thought about Mulvey’s statement to see if i can adapt it to these videos. These videos are:



In this music video, we see numerous females prancing around whilst the males stand back and admire. At 3.40 we see a female dancing in front of one of the male artists in a way which she is presenting her body to him as he looks at her. There is also a shot at 4.16 which shows all 3 male artists posing infront of the camera however the 3 females are behind them being blocked which could show the power and importance of the males. There is also a ‘unrated’ version of this music video which shows the females completely naked. Again, this shows how females are viewed as sex objects and how in this video they have no respect for themselves and are giving the power to the males.












In this video we see lots of half naked girls wearing only bikinis  revealing all their bodies and we see lots of close ups on their body parts which gives us a male perspectives look and shows that they are just focusing on women’s bodies. The viewer is being encouraged to see these females in a sexual and provocative way as the camera zooms into their body parts presenting them as sexual objects. This matches with what Mulvey is expressing about the representation and image of females in music videos. 


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