Representation in Gender

Representation of Gender in Music Videos

What is representation? 

At a basic level we can say that all media are forms of representation. The people involved in making the representation set all governed by their own beliefs, values and attitudes. This means that in representation is objective. Most media products reproduce dominant ideologies in the way that they represent the world, which had led to many minorities complaining that they are misrepresented in the media. 

From: Media and Film Studies Handbook (Hodder Arnold 2007)

By Clark, Jones, Malysko and Wharton 

In music videos representation of gender is completely polarized. Men are seen as aggressive whilst women are presented as passive, men are portrayed as wanting to have sex with women whilst women are portrayed as sex objects, with emphasis on their physical appearance, portrayed through camera angles such as close-ups of body parts which imply this stereotype.

Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze

Mulvey has suggested that in films, women are presented as 'objects', images with visual and erotic impact, which she has termed to be their 'to-be-looked-at-ness'. Classical Hollywood films positioned the audience as male, and through identification with the male protagonist gave him an active role on viewing the female subject and is seen to be gaining pleasure in doing so. This look, from audience to actress, is termed 'the look' or 'the gaze'. According to Mulvey the look could be 'voyeuristic' (where the women are seen as virtuous or beautiful) or 'fetishistic' (where women are viewed as excessively sexual beings).

DEVELOPMENTS OF THE GAZE:

Since Mulvey's essay, the concept of the gaze has been developed and expanded to incorporate different viewer-positions, such as:

• The Spectator's Gaze: The audience looking at the subject on the screen.
• The Male Gaze: This keeps with Mulvey's theory and describes the male viewing female, either voyeuristicly or fetishisticly.
• The Female Gaze: This accepts that women can also gain vain voyeuristic pleasure from looking at a subject and that film techniques can sometimes be used to position the female audience to do so.
• The Intra-digetic Gaze: When one character gazes at another character. Through the process of identification, this may lead to the spectator's gaze also.
• The Extra-digetic Gaze: Which is when a character looks out to the audience, breaking what is known as the 'fourth wall'.

From: A Beginners Guide to Mulvey
Published in Media Magazine

This fetishistic view of women can be seen in Robin Thickes's video for Blurred Lines: 

In this video the girls are present as sexual objects at which the men look at almost materialistically. 

The girls are presented as interchangeable as the men change their interest and focus between the three of them pm this view is seen quite a lot through music videos but the girls play up to this stereotype with their vacant expressions. The product placement within the video can be seen as the way in which the girls are viewed i.e. a status symbol. 

The product placement is almost seen as the same way as the girls are- as part of a  status symbol 

The girls are almost materialistic and interchangeable, which is shown how the males in the video change their focus from each girl.

Christina Aguilera's 'Dirrty'  video can be argued to invert that stereotype. 

(David LaChappelle, 2002)

Aguilera has said about her video : 

"Ok, I may have been the naked-ass girl in the video, but if you look at it carefully, I'm also at the forefront. I'm in the power position, in complete command of everything and everybody me. To be totally balls-out like that is, for me, the measure of a true artist" 

In this video, Christina took quite a stand in the way Miley Cyrus is doing today and it caused much controversy. It could be argued that rather than reinforcing feminist views in her skimpy costumes and dance routines, which ultimately play up to the idea of a male fantasy, she is just undermining them, however it could also be argued that alternatively the combination of being in control of the situation and her powerful vocals and lyrics which call on her 'girls' to make some noise in a male dominated situation can be seen to be empowering to women. 

 Through scenes like this Christina plays up to the fetishistic stereotype. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0CazRHB0so

(Due to the explicit nature of this video I was unable to post it on my blog but above is a link to the video via YouTube)

Lily Allen is a recent example of taking the traditional ideas of representation of genders in music videos and turning them on their head, as seen in her latest video 'Hard Out Here'.  In this video she almost parodies what has become to the be norm for how women are presented in the media. She does this by parodying scenes from Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines', which can be seen as an extreme representation of women in music videos. This is also seen through the comedic character of her manger who is showing her throughout the video how she 'should' be acting which is completely undermined by her lyrics which are actually very empowering to women but in a subtle, implicit way which adds to the humour and ridiculousness of the video, therefore emphasizing her video. 

Lily Allen plays up the stereotype in this video but in a way which shows the ridiculousness of it.

Here we see Lily Allen parodying other videos which take the extreme view of presenting the girls from a  fetishistic viewpoint, by doing this it is empowering to women.