Feminist Responses to Music Videos

It will be important to consider how people are going to respond to my music video, feminism is often relevant through the release of music videos and i should consider how a feminist may respond to my production.

A recent music video which caused a mass of feminist responses was Robin Thicke: Blurred Lines (shown below)

This video has been claimed to over-sexualize women, remove their personality and also their intelligence. In this video the men are free to roam around the women, touch and stare at them in ways in which are considered both perverted and inappropriate. This undermines women and suggests that males are superior as they seem in control of the women in the video.

As well as this, feminists and Thicke himself have argued that the intention of this video was to degrade women as much as possible. This is also suggested by the songs lack of relevance to comedy, society or any current issues. Each women in the video walk around with vacant expressions as if they were dolls whom are there for the sole purpose of amusement for the men. They are celebrated only as sexual objects as they have no clothes, no script and no part in the video other than to be objectified.

In my own music video, it is important that none of our shots are degrading nor are they focused on either sex being superior to the other. I believe that we have succeeded in this in our planning as both the male and female characters have the upper hand in the music video. Although the male may seem more powerful and the girl may be more vulnerable, she is seen as more of the positive character whilst he plays more of a villainous role. 

We have however, intended on using shots which are in use of the male gaze, although this may be argued to be against feministic views, it is used to be clear within the story-line so the audience have a good understanding of what is going on rather than to degrade the female character. 

The male gaze is a concept initially created by Laura Mulvey (shown below) this is where the camera often lingers on the sexual or attractive features (usually body) of a female and is often presented in the contexts of a mans reactions to such shots. This often objectifies women and the women experiences the naritive by firstly identifying with how the male is seeing the women.