6. Laura Mulvey's theory.

Laura Mulvey's theory on gender representation.

She talked about a theory known as The Male Gaze. It means that in our society, the dominant and active gender is male, whereas female are passive and to be looked at as objects.

When analysing music videos, we have to be aware of:

• The reaction of the men to women and vice versa
• The message given in the video about women and men
• From whom perspective the audience is an observer
• Who the audience is for the video
• According to Mulvey, women are dismembered in all forms of media- there is a focus on parts of their body. She argued that men are shown as a whole. 

We were assigned a task to prove our understanding in Laura Mulvey's theory. This is my task:

We also analysed three music videos as part of our understanding.

Two more examples:

1.

In this video, the singer Nicki Minaj is dressed in a sexualised way as she is wearing lingerie to attract a male audience (for example in min: 0.13-0.16 and throughout the video) 

2.

From the beginning of this video, audience can see Beyonce wearing make up, especially red lips and might be used to emphasise her lips. Her t-shirt is open and we can see her lingerie. Throughout the video audience is shown different sexy and showy positions of women. This reinforces the idea that women are objects to be looked at and men are the ones who look at them.