Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
REPRESENTATION IN GE NDER
What sort of music video do we expect to see
representation of females? Laura Mulveys theories:
The music videos we can expect to see some sort of
representation of women are both Hip Hop, and The male gaze occurs when the
Rap. These types of genre are well known for camera puts the audience into the
creating an imbalance between male and female. perspective of a heterosexual man. The
The females are often the back up dancers and they camera lingers on the curves of the
wear very little clothing (have a lot of cleavage skin female body, and events which occur
on show). These genres clearly portray the female to women are presented largely in the
character to be passive. context of the mans reaction to these
However, in the present day of music, a lot of these events. (1975)
representations of gender have been changed. A lot
of hip hop and R&B artists have started to challenge
In a world ordered by sexual
these stereotypes and revolutionized the music
imbalance, pleasure in looking has
media.
been split between active/male and
A few artists I can think of off the top of my head are; passive/female. The determining male
ADELLE, PINK, LILLY ALLEN, and AMY WINEHOUSE gaze projects its fantasy onto the
female figure which is stylised
I still feel that this stereotypical representation of accordingly. (1992)
gender still exists in the present, they just do it in
different ways. We still capture features like the
sexualized back up dancers that were used in music
videos ever since Biggie, nas, and 2 pac shakur.
RE-WRITE MULVEYS
Task 3 THEORY
We were given a task during lesson. This task was all The male gaze is the way a female
about the lyrics compared to the pictures created character is seen through the eyes
on screen, and how they both tell different or the of a heterosexual male. Certain
same stories. camera shots and techniques are
used to often sexualize the female
character. This also objectifies the
The song we were told to listen to was called female character to an extent and
BEAUTIFUL produced by Pharrelle Williams and makes her desirable.
featuring Snoop Dog. We were also told to think
about how the video might look. From listening to the
The society of which we live in has
lyrics I was given the impression that it is about a girl
an imbalance in equality between
and our singer finds her absolutely perfect and
the two genders, males are often
special. He talks about wanting to comfort her and
taken the most active role, making
calls her beautiful. From this impression on the lyrics I
him more dominant. On the other
imagine the video presenting a male and female
hand the female takes on the more
character in a romantic setting.
passive role, making her the binary
opposition compared to a dominant
Task 4 male.
2
3