Theories
Laura Mulvey
Mulvey talks about her feminist theory ‘the Male gaze’ she came up with this theory in 1975. The Male gaze is what she believes in that the film audience view characters in a heterosexual male’s perspective.
She uses signs from various music videos and points out that the cameras focus on women’s curves and bare flesh and this does not regularly happen when camera is on men.
She argues that it objectifies women. A recent example is Chris Browns ‘Strip’ which lyrics contain “Then back it up, beep beep, like a trucker, Nice thighs, nice waist, and you know I can’t forget about your face”.
In this video, Chris brown is in the centre and is topless surrounded with a large number of women in underwear dancing.
Theorists such as Durkin, Gunter and Mulvey noted that there is the sexualising of a woman’s body is shown even when the song has nothing to do with the female’s body. An example is Beyonce’s
‘If I were a Boy’.
Female artists or actors in music videos physique are all similar with what society has classed as ‘perfect’.
This includes being slim, curvaceous and of average height, which is seen in many music videos Pitbull uses these stereotypes in his videos sell. That is just to name one example.
Pitbull - I know you want me