Research: Laura Mulvey - Representation

Representation consists of many parts – gender, age, ethnicity, regional Identity etc. Music videos place a great emphasis on representation of gender, especially of females for the male gaze. Laura Mulvey said:

“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, she is saying that the audience is usually watching through a man’s perspective; therefore, woman are often dismembered and objectified in order to appeal to the male audience. This is done through the choice of clothes, hair, setting etc.

The video for Blurred Lines (Robin Thicke ft T.I & Pharrell) is a video which strongly objectifies woman and focuses on the male gaze and pleasure, through the use of wearing lingerie and being viewed sexually by the artists.   

However, there are some artists who challenge the representation of woman when creating music videos. Adele has proven that whilst looking elegant, fully clothed, and sitting down the whole duration of a video, the video can still be a hit without being sexually presented to the world. Her video for Rolling in the Deep had received 432,342,027 views on YouTube!