Research: Laura Mulvey

  Representations

Laura Mulvey looked closely at gender representations in music videos based on genre, artist's gender etc. She famously 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". What she is saying in simple terms is that due to the fact we live in a patriarchal society representations of women in videos are more submissive an dare a male ideal of women. This notion of representations of women in music videos is very accurate for some genres of music in particular RnB and Hip Hop. Surprisingly, even when it is a female rapper the images in the video still reflect the male gaze. 

I have found a very good example of what Laura Mulvey is saying; the I looked at was Sisqo's Thong Song. This video 100% projected the male gaze and was very stereotypical of a hip hop video in the sense the females were practically naked in a beautiful paradise location surrounding one or very few males. 

Not only this but there was a few examples of phallic imagery in the video as well; those being a hot dog and a woman getting soaked with a water gun. This is again very indicative that the target audience is the male viewer. 

 

As well as this there was a couple of times when the females laying on the beach would touch their bodies very seductively and suggestively. This portrays women as craving sex and the male touch, which in turn would boost the male viewers egos. 

 

And finally the camerawork helped to strengthen the fact this video was made by a male for other males to enjoy. In this I mean there was many tilts looking up and looking down the women's bodies to obviously emphasise certain areas that men enjoy looking at from a far. Along with this there was a lot of close ups on specific areas of the females body in particular the crouch area.