"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 female figure which is styled accordingly". (Laura Mulvey,1992)
As I believe what Laura Mulvey is trying to say is that women have become the ones who show while men have become the ones who watch.
The representation that women usually get in music videos is as a sex object. They are shown as a trophies to look at and admire and often women inside the world of the music video are happy with this function; men staring at them and women do not mind. We can expect this in genres such as Rnb,hip hop and heavy metal.
As I believe one of the artist that challenge this is Queen. They are a rock band and easily can have women in their music videos but they play with the conventional representation of gender; one specific example of this is the music video of the song "I want to break free" where the band is wearing female clothing.
The image of an artist in a music video will have been carefully planned;from the choice of clothes and style of hair to te situation or narrative that the artist is placed whitin.As an audience we will "read" or deconstruct his represenation and will interpret it based on our own cultural references and understanding.
Thanks to this reading which the audience does, the artist gets an style or personality that will attract and audience because they feel identified with that particular style. As an example of this there is two artist that send a completely different idea of women representation and therefore a different style for them as an artists.
Dizze Rascal in his music video "Holiday" presents women as a sex object that is there just to look at; men that have this same thought will be represented by Dizze Rascal.
Missy Elliott in his music video "All N my Grill" presents women not in a sexual aspect, more in power, therefore people that support this idea would be represented by her.
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