Monday, 17 September 2012

MG: Are music videos commercials, porn or art? Discuss.

  •  Music videos can be interpreted as commercials as artists are promoting certain messages throughout their videos, whether it is performance- based, narrative-based or concept-based.  For example, the music video for ‘We Found Love’ by Rihanna is narrative-based as well as performance-based and endorses a certain stereotype throughout. Young girls and women admire Rihanna, and what she presents in her video will be seen as acceptable and attractive, even if it is not morally right. 
  • At the beginning of the video there are short shots of Rihanna and her romantic interest in love and hate scenarios intercut in a synchronous relationship with the beat of the music. This advertises to her audience what relationships are supposedly like and gives them a false expectation of men and relationships due to the way they are shown in such extreme contrasts. The use of handicam at the beginning of this video also enforces this as it makes it more personal and realistic.
  • The synchronous relationship between music and visuals continues as the music tempo increases and clips are shown of drugs, pills and dilated pupils in a faster cutting rate. This is then promoting that the use of drugs is okay and almost glamorous as someone as famous and as admired as Rihanna is taking them. The use of slow motion and time compression are also used to emphasize a synchronous relationship between the music and visuals, symbolising how drugs can affect you and how exhilarating the feeling is to be under the influence of certain drugs.
  • Rihanna's portrayal of her character: having sex, violently fighting with her boyfriend, drinking, smoking and under the influence of illegal drugs is not an appropriate role model to young girls and women but due to their idolisation of the famous singer, they will assume that these activities are acceptable and this could lead to further problems in our society.
  • Music videos can also be portrayed as porn as women are often exploited through the production of music videos. Laura Mulvey’s concept of ‘The Male Gaze’ enforces this and has been heavily influential in feminist film theory. The idea behind ‘The Male Gaze’ is when the audience are forced to regard the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man, denying women agency, meaning it degrades them to the status of objects. ‘Stupid Girls’ by the artist Pink is a parody of how women present themselves in celebrity society and how she believes that they exploit themselves in a negative way.
  •  The voyeuristic treatment of the female body is emphasised in this video through Pink’s reconstructions of different celebrities. For instance, where she is on a date at the bowling alley and she sees her date staring at a girl jumping up and down with her breasts out, she pulls a tag under her arm which then inflates her own breasts so that the boy will take more interest in her due to the size of them. This suggests how girls will now go to extreme measures to get noticed and highlights the idea of ‘the artificial look’ which Goffman et al found popular in music videos. This is also shown in another part of the video where Pink is getting plastic surgery in order to improve her appearance.
  • ‘Dismemberment’ is also emphasised in this video. There are close-ups of bottoms, breasts and bodies in bikinis where they become objects for consumption. There is an amplifying relationship between the lyrics and visuals: as she sings about how she believes girls are objectifying themselves and how they act absolutely ridiculously, she dresses as certain celebrities and mocks them. For example, where she is mimicking Jessica Simpson washing a car, she is dressed in a bikini and dances “provocatively” to the camera, presenting the fact that she is there only for male pleasure.
  • Pink also shows how women commodify themselves by the way they work so hard to have the perfect body, such as when she goes into the toilets stating that she’s eaten ‘over 300 calories that day’ and throws up in order to be thinner. This enforces the idea of ‘the male gaze’ as she is trying to advertise her body to men. This is also shown when she is at the gym and takes off her top, revealing her in a sports bra to show her cleavage in attempt to get the attention of a personal trainer.
  • The way that the young girl at the beginning is watching TV and, at first, wants to learn how to become one of these idolised celebrities, presents how the media is having an effect on younger generations by promoting this sexualisation of women. However, Pink’s aim is to change this by showing how fake and stupid these celebrities actually are.  This is achieved at the end of the video by showing the girl deciding to play with a football rather than make up, dolls and Barbies.
  • It could also be argued that music videos are art, as they are ‘perfectly formed, contemporary moving image form: quintessentially based on reinvention, reimagining, never standing still; always looking different; being in flux; moving’ according to Matt Hanson in ‘The End of Celluloid’ (2004). He states that ‘what is in vogue this year should be completely different from the year before’, meaning that every music video is different and therefore is art, as vogue could also be interpreted as art.
  • For example, the video ‘Single Ladies’by the artist Beyoncé is very simple and minimalist but still very effective andartistic as it is shot entirely in black andwhite in a blank studio location. Thewhole video is of long takes, integratedwith fast cutting rates of Beyoncé andtwo dancers performing a dance routinewith the use of lots of panning shots and zooms. There is always some kindof movement in the video making it extra eye-catching and impressive, implementing the idea that it is of an art form.
  • However, music videos like ‘Sorry for Party Rocking’ by LMFAO present a different form of art as it is set in a futuristic location with cartoon effects and a colourful colour scheme. There is a frequent use of split-screen, green screens and handicam to present chaos in the music video. It is a complete contrast to Beyoncé’s music video however; they could both be interpreted as art due to the way that Hanson mentions that different music videos ‘inhabit that crucial space between the commercial and the experimental and acts as the crossover point’ meaning that they can still appeal to the same audiences even though they are so contrasting.

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