Representaion of Gender in Music Video

What is representation?

Any type of media can form a representation. Those who are involved in the creation of the representation are all lead by their personal principles, views and attitudes. This means that all representations are subjective. Majority of the time media products are made in a way that it captures the belief that most of us have in the way it’s perceived to the world, which seems to cause the minorities to speak up as they feel that it’s a misrepresentation.

Why do stereotypes of gender exist?

There are various gender stereotypes across different genres. An example of this is in soaps where we will very frequently see the person(s) portrayed as ‘the gossip’, ‘the tart with the heart’ or ‘the hard man’ whereas in sitcoms we often find ‘the nymphomaniac’, ‘the hopeless romantic’ and ‘the lad about town’. In music videos especially you see that the interpretation of gender seems to be divided as men are allegedly aggressive and sex addicts whilst on the other hand women are seen as being passive and sex objects. Bearing these in mind severely highlight on physical appearance.

Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze

Laura suggests that women in film are represented as objects, like images with visual and erotic impact which she labelled as their ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’. Classical Hollywood always seem to position the audience as the male and by doing this they saw that it was rather beneficial as it gave them an active role in viewing the female subject and gaining pleasure from doing so. This look from audience to actress is termed ‘the look’ or most commonly ‘the gaze’. According to Laura the look could be ‘voyeuristic’ which is when the women are shown to be virtuous and beautiful) or even ‘fethishistic’ (when women are viewed solemnly as sexual beings).

Representation today and its perception

For instance take the Christina Aguilera ‘Dirty’ video where she is wearing very little clothing. There was a mixed reaction from the video especially because of the fact that she started out on the Mickey Mouse Show and now she’s prancing around half dressed. In her defence she comes out saying that she isn’t the typical ‘lame chick in a rap video’ and that she has a position of power in the video because she isn’t placed in the background.

In my opinion I think that she did this in order to create controversy in order generat sales which is a very clever strategy that various artists adopt. In a sense it is safe to say that sex sells and Christina did this and it has ultimately worked in her favour.