Research for Music Video... Laura Mulvey's Theory

"Representation consists of many parts - gender, age ethnicity, place, etc." In music videos gender is usually the most common representation. This is where Laura Mulvey comes in as her famous words on the subject were "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" - Laura Mulvey, 1992 - in my understanding Mulvey is trying to show the world that even when it's developing and we are moving past points of extreme sexist behaviour, the principle still exists. This is a world where males and females aren't equal, even women (Beyonce) who make a massive fuss about how women should be respected by men dress down in their own videos to look attractive and more appealing to their male audience.Usually this mainly applies to two types of genres; hip-hop and heavy metal videos. Of course there are other artists who try to challenge this representation. 'Lissie' is one, her videos aren't revealing, they're just simple with a clear motive. "This tired heart just want's to be at home" picturing the elephant obviously out of his comfort zone, but apart from that this video is made of disjuncture there is no relation between the lyrics and visual effects except for the artist, also the female artist is selling her music not her image as she doesn't specifically undress to 'bribe' the male audience. Have a look:

"The image of an artist in a music video will have been carefully planned; from the choice of clothes and style of hair to the solution of 'narrative' that the artist is placed within. As an audience we will 'read' or reconstruct this representation and will interpret it based on our own cultural references and understanding. Through doing this, we also become accustomed to seeing familiar representations within the videos for particular artists/groups." This just shows how important research and good planning is relevant to our own production. Careful thoughts of the mise en scene and editing techniques to create an appealing image for the artist seems like one of the most important parts in production.