Representation In Music Videos

In music videos the representation seen differs depending on the genre of the music video.
 

Hip-Hop: in this genre, men typically are portrayed to be dominant over females who are objectified and submissive. If the video is based around a male artist, the women in the video tend to be scantily clad in the background whereas if the video is based around a female artist, the women in the video tend to have more significance. Typically areas of representation such as sexuality aren’t seen to be equal due to the use of words such as ‘faggot’ which are seen to be belittling homosexuals. Usually people featured in Hip-Hop videos are seen to be rich as they normally have things like sports cars and expensive jewellery featured in their video.

Pop: In this genre, men are typically portrayed as dominant over females, but not so much as a genre like rap or hip-hop. Men in pop are usually singing less about how attracted they are to a woman and more about how much they love or have feelings for a woman, meaning that women naturally will be less objectified. However women can be portrayed as being the perfect house wife or girlfriend, doing things that are seen to be stereotypical of women in the video, an example of this can be seen in Jake Bugg’s  - Two Fingers video. However women in a pop usually are objectified as this is a demand of the record label, they usually don’t get a choice in how they dress, however some women can go against the norms in some of their music videos, especially when they are singing about females. People in pop videos are either seen to be similar to people in Hip-Hop videos as having a lot of money or they are seen to be portraying a narrative or story so it shows their everyday lives which are less glamorous than usually displayed or the life of a character they may possibly relate to. Sexuality is much more respected in pop today and not as abused as in Hip-Hop, an example of homosexual equality in pop videos is shown in Macklemore’s – Same Love video.

Rock: In rock videos usually women and men are seen to be equal, due to the fact there are few front women on the rock scene, men tend to take the lead, however when women feature in their videos it is usually as their partners or as their love interests but the men very rarely objectify the women and are seen to have a lot of respect for them. Rock videos are usually very basic and don’t represent the people featured to be rich or wealthy, they are usually seen to be very everyday people making them more relatable than characters seen in Pop or Hip-Hop videos.

Gender: Recently in the media, more than ever before, there has been controversy surrounding the representation of women in music videos. Certain genres of music are known for their misogynistic representation of women, however this degrading representation seems to have spread to other genres of music and has even been deemed as acceptable. A perfect example of this can been seen with probably the most controversial video of 2013, Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, the video has hidden messages surrounding rape and the 'blurred lines' between what is seen to be rape and what is not. The women in the video are seen to be more of possessions than actual people with feelings, we will not be creating any equality between men and women in our video as if it were to be released we would want it to be popular because it is well filmed not because it is controversial. Blurred Lines shows perfectly how 9 times out of 10, women are seen to be below men in most music videos.


Posted By Abbey Newton