1. Representation in Music
Videos
To understand what representation means in the context of Music Videos
To understand how and why representations are constructed
To know some of the theories and terminology attached to representation
2. Why do we need to think about
REPRESENTATION?
- You must think very carefully about how your artist will be represented
in your music video
- Does it fit your audience? Your genre? Your institution?
- What are you trying to achieve with your representation? What
ideologies are you encoding into your representation?
- How are you using other media concepts to enforce your
representation?
- You will have to analyse your representation in your evaluation.
- Remember that you may have to explain these choices in the exam
too, so they have to be CONSCIOUS decisions!
3. What is Representation?
The construction of aspects of reality (people, places, identities, etc).
It is through representation that we understand the world and
construct our meanings and understandings of truth.
4.
5.
6. Which different groups of people receive
particularly STEREOTYPICAL representations in
music videos?
• What are these stereotypes?
16. The academic bit… representation terminology
Voyeurism - Sigmund Freud
• erotic pleasure can be gained by looking at a sexual object (preferably when the object is unaware of being
watched).
Male Gaze - Laura Mulvey 1975
• proposed that because filmmakers are predominantly male the presence of women is often for the purposes
of display (rather than narrative). This is to facilitate a voyeuristic response in spectators, which presumes a
male gaze (regardless of the gender of spectator) one that is or may feel like a powerful controlling gaze at
the female on display who is effectively objectified and passive. In male performance videos the voyeuristic
treatment of the female body is often apparent, with the use of dancers as adornments to the male star ego.
Exhibitionism
• Female performers being at once sexually provocative and apparently in control of and inviting a sexualised
gaze in what could be termed as the opposite of voyeurism.
Raunch Culture – Andrea Levy
• In her book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Levy attacks the increasingly
sexualised culture that objectifies women. She argues that women are encouraged to see themselves as
objects and to see sex as their only source of power.
17. The debate?
• The debate is: Who is exploiting whom? Is the female flesh on display
simply a cynical exploitation of the female body to increase male
profit margins or a life enhancing assertion of female self-confidence
and sexual independence?
18. Your task for your blog:
TASK ONE:
We would like you to find the following representations in music videos and use
representation and textual analysis words to analyse:
• Voyeurism
• Male gaze
• Exhibitionism
• female gaze (when men seem to be objectified/exploited/over sexualised)
• homosexuality
• strong dominant female
TASK TWO:
Choose ONE music video that you like. Put it on your blog, and analyse the representation
in depth. You can either focus on the representation of the artist, or the group of people
that he/she represents. Use media terminology and theories where relevant.
