Representations mean the way something/someone is portrayed or descripted and in media this can consist of many parts such a gender, age, ethnicity, space/place and so on. But when it comes to music videos the main point of representation that we focus on is gender.
The image of an artist is very much carefully planned in music videos, from clothes to make-up to the situation the artist is placed in. The reason for this is since the whole idea of making music videos is to promote the artist. The viewers will then deconstruct the representation that is being shown based on their own understanding, so everyone will have their own interpretation. As the audience we also become used to seeing such representations because they are so common within music videos especially for certain genres.
“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.” In other words Laura Mulvey’s ideology on the “male gaze” is that during music videos the camera tends to linger on female assets such as her legs, bum and cleavage. Women are presented in a way that a male would generally react to her; they are filmed in an objective and seductive way making them come across as objects of pleasure and nothing else. Sometimes the sexualizing of the female might not even have anything to do with the song or product being advertised but is put in because it sales more and appeals to an already existing audience.
The way the woman also act as well as the way the are portrayed says a lot about the male, it reinforces that the male is always supposed to be the more dominate character, gets what he wants (in this case the female) and the female is just there pleasure and to be looked at.
Some good example's of this kidn of representation would be:
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