RESEARCH: Laura Mulveys

Laura Mulvey didn’t write her theory directly about music videos, she wrote about representation of women in the media in general, but this can be applied to music videos.

In her quote she basically states that men have power and women don’t. That men do the looking and women are the ones that get looked at. Also that the perception that men have of women (that women are sexual objects) is in printed on images of women in the media. Mulvey also discusses that women are ‘dismembered.’ We as an audience are made to focus on certain parts of their body and not the women as a whole whereas the men are shown as a whole.

 In this video there are a lot of close-ups of their bums, which makes the audience focus on those parts of their body. This goes along with Mulvey’s theory that women are looked on as sexual objects. For this video I think that the audience would more likely be men because of the content in the video.

In this video it is clear that men do the looking and women get looked at, which is something that Laura Mulvey mentioned in her theory. These screenshots show the men’s reactions after they look at the women in the video. Firstly the reaction of the male character when he looks at Nicki Minaj shows that he’s impressed with what he sees. Another example is the last two pictures and the reaction on the male faces after they look at Cassie, this shows that they can’t take their eyes of off her and are ‘love struck.’

RESEARCH: Carol Vernallis

Carol Vernallis studied editing and camera work in music videos, she observed that edits in music videos come much more frequently than in film.

Carol Vernallis says that narrative in music videos is not always complete and doesn’t have a resolution and the end. She also mentions that there’s not always a balance between narrative and performance and there are often pose questions in the narrative that are not answered within the video. Through her observations Carol Vernallis learnt that the rules of ‘continuity’ editing are broken in order to draw attention to what is on screen. Also that there are obvious edits, special effects, jump cuts and camera movement (not a lot of static shots). Lastly she learnt that there’s a base track used frequently in music videos to give the video a structure.

Jump cuts

Special effect editing

Use of base track in the edit

RESEARCH: Andrew Goodwin's theory

Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwins theory talks about the structure of music videos. He states that music videos approach narrative from a different angle to novels and films. The reasons for the different narrative is because music videos are built around song lyrics, the singer is used as narrator and a charater and unlike in films the singer breaks the 4^th wall which involves the viewer. He also says that pop videos rely on repetition of images which goes with the repetition of choruses and lines.

Andrew Goodwins theory also states that there are three types of relations between songs and videos:

Illustration

This video shows an example of illustration, this is when the video tells the story of the lyrics.

This video fits the category because whatever is mentioned you can see happening on the screen. Also we don’t see the artist perform the song, it is 100% narrative.

Amplification

This video is an example of amplification where the video introduces meaning that do not contradict with the lyrics but add layers of meaning.

This fits the category because it uses both performance and narrative throughout the video and adds layers of meaning through the idea of showing Kanye West’s ‘home’, the audience can then work out that the song is called ‘homecoming’ and it includes him walking around a town he knows. At some parts of the song it also includes visual images that match the lyrics.

Disjuncture

This video is an example of disjuncture where there is little connection between the lyrics and video/where the video contradicts the lyrics. This fits the category because…