“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking had 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.
And sadly, yes she’s true. It seems that music videos are changing, and through simplistic clips, where legs were too controversial to show because of the dance moves (Elvis Presley)
...to where hardly anything is covered (RnB, POP artists such as Ciara, Rihanna).
Lady Gaga in Telephone |
Representation of women .
Women are represented as being an ‘objects’ and that’s what Mulvey means by ‘passive female’, where women are being looked at and judged based on their appearance. If you look at Dizzee Rascal’s holiday...
Women are represented as ‘objets’, there is a mid shot but we don’t even see her face because all the attention is brought to her body.
There are examples that do not follow Mulvey's rule, for example Missy Eliot. In the video, her costume makes outlines her shapes, and makes her look ever more bigger. It's almost like she's not ashamed of her body, and exaggerates it ever more. Here, it's like women are active, and man are more passive.
The use of fish eye lens make her face and lips look even more 'deformed' and she seems to do this on purpose. When she's dancing, we see a male dancers behind her, they look attractive and their costume is looking attractive, so again- we see male as 'passive' because in this case they are the ones who are being looked at. You go Missy !
man=passive |
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