Music Video Inspiration

A style of music video I personally like is when it is predominantly shot above the shoulders, showing the singer's facial expressions (close-up) and not much else. It is simplistic, minimalistic and allows the music to carry emotion whilst refraining from pushing a narrative that could hinder the meaning that the audience takes from the song. It also allows a sense of star appeal which is beneficial.
Examples of this type of music video are as followed:

Nothing Compares 2U - Sinead O'Connor (1990)

Du Riechst So Gut - Rammstein (1995), heavily inspired by Sinead O'Connor's video

Another example that I really like is Round & Round by New Order:

This music video doesn't have any singing as none of the models from the music video are in New Order or are even musicians at all. It is so simplistic and really emphasises New Order's anonymity (despite them not actually being actively anonymous), allowing the audience to focus more on the song. In a way, the music video is very relevant to the subject of the song as the song is about putting on a front and pretending to be something that you aren't - "The picture you see is no portrait of me / It's too real to be shown to someone I don't know". It shows models without make-up and without any flashy 80s clothing, so they are their real selves and it is quite personal. Ideally I would like to use this video as heavy inspiration and maybe perhaps recite it as homage or postmodernism.

Pagan Poetry by Björk - music video analysis

Bjork's 2001 song Pagan Poetry from her album Vespertine had a controversial music video for the time. It holds heavily sexual imagery and even nudity.
The meaning I take from this song is about forbidden love; a woman falling in love with someone who is toxic and makes the protagonist want to 'hurt myself again'. The singer knows that this person that she is in love with is bad and that he makes things worse for her - but her love is so blind that she wants that to happen. On the surface, the relationship looks healthy and okay, 'but the darkest pit in me' = deep down it really isn't.
The music video shows distorted shots that, on the surface, are hard to really work out what it is. It is something moving. One of the shots is a closeup shot of Bjork's mouth singing, then changes to a clear close up with a lens similar to a fisheye but not quite. It then transitions to a close up shot of her face, expressions being that of a sexual nature. The music video has heavily sexual connotations, suggesting that the song is about a relationship being knowingly toxic but putting yourself through it because the sexual relationship holds you back.
The meaning of this song and video is polysemic like most music videos. Another meaning I took from this was that the relationship is possibly abusive in some way, which is why a lot of the imagery is centring on pain, e.g the close-up shots of body piercings. Maybe not an abusive relationship, but more of a BDSM relationship, as the video is so overly sexual.
Something interesting about this music video is the fact that it is overly sexual but does not sexualise Bjork in a misogynistic way. There is a lot of nudity and sexual imagery but it does not objectify or fetishise Bjork at all. The mid-shot of her, hair blowing in the wind, wearing an Alexander Wang dress with her chest exposed is more emotional than sexual. The positioning of the camera allows her facial expressions whilst she sings be the focal point, rather than her breasts. It's like a reversal of the fragmentation theory.

Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze : Explanation & Application

Mulvey believes that all media is either crafted from a male's perspective or crafted for a male audience to enjoy. Mulvey released an essay in 1975 in which she states that women are typically objects of the gaze - meaning women on the screen are objects of desire. She also states that the audience, regardless of gender or sexuality, have to view a woman from a heterosexual male's point of view as the film has been constructed to be that way. 

Features of the male gaze are fragmentation, close-ups on sexual body parts, female characters having a secondary part in the narrative to a male, a male-centred plot and having women speak significantly less than men.

Chris Cunningham’s 1999 music short film for Aphex Twin’s track ‘Windowlicker’ (5/6) is a parody of notoriously misogynistic hip-hop music videos. Conventions of the male gaze are easy to see in this video, with consistent shots of sexualised body parts, again, following the fragmentation theory. The mise-en-scene of the wardrobe choices having the women be scantily-clad as opposed to their male counterparts is a great example of how (although this is a parody – many hip hop music videos follow this therefore it is still a valid point to make) when an artist is male and has the ability to decide how women are represented in their art, the women will be as objectified as possible. Also, referring to Mulvey’s quote about women being ‘subjugated to her image’, all of the women bar the first two in this music video have the face of Richard James (Aphex Twin). Though in this instance it is part of the parody and part of Aphex Twin’s image, it still takes away the women’s personality and what makes them significant from each other. As they don’t have varying faces, they are all pretty much exactly the same and no longer individual people. Objects.

Freud : Explanation & Application

Freud's personality theory implies that there are 3 sides to every one of us:
The Id - This side is present from birth. It has childish, animalistic desires and lacks morals and values. It requires immediate satisfaction and is present in the unconscious mind.
The Ego - This side is the middle of the Ego and Superego. This side develops after birth and is part of the reality principle, making it responsible for dealing with reality as it is organised and rational. It is present in the conscious mind.
The Superego - This develops from ages 5 to 6 and is the opposite of the Id. It operates on the Moral Principle. If the individual chooses to follow it, they feel proud! If not, they feel guilty. It exists in the precocious mind.

A famous cult film that heavily relies on this psychoanalysis is David Fincher's Fight Club.

The film follows Edward Norton's unnamed character who is the Ego, alongside his Id in the scene above (Tyler Durden played by Brad Pitt) and his superego, Marla. Tyler represents the animalistic desires deep rooted in Jack.

Male Gaze essay evaluation

I felt that my essay had sophisticated writing, correct grammar and a good level of communication throughout as always, due to this definitely being a strong point of mine. I also felt that my choice to explore a variety of film types was beneficial as it allowed me to explore how the male gaze theory really is apparent in all art forms, inherently misogynistic or not.
My weaknesses were definitely to do with the amount of referencing - I struggled to find a variety of things to back up my findings. All the quotes I had used and followed came from the same book. Though there were a few quotes, it is still not representative of varying sides of an argument and is very one-sided. My essay also isn't as in-depth and full of my own great knowledge like my last one, it is unfortunately a downgrade in quality. My research and application for Lacan is poor also as I struggled to grasp the concept fully.
In future, I will work on working in a more progressive manner rather than aiming to complete it in a short amount of time.

Lacan : explanation and application

Jacques Lacan created the idea of lack and instigated that said lack causes desire to rise. 'Desire is a relation to being to lack. The lack is the lack of properly speaking. It is not the lack of this or that, but lack of being whereby the being exists.'
Lacan states that until an infant sees themselves in the mirror for the first time, they see themselves as individual, separate body parts. Once they see their whole self in the mirror, the sense of self and identity is created. They become one dimensional. This realisation can be unsettling as the image the child sees in the mirror may not even match up how they felt inside or how they thought they looked. Lacan states that due to this, individuals will strive to always be more like the mirror's reflection of themselves. Due to this, ourselves are misunderstood and people continue to misunderstand each other. We will always maintain our appearance to avoid allowing the outside world to know of our chaotic internal selves.
This is similar to the Freudian approach of the 'Id' acting on the hedonistic lifestyle whereas the super ego acts on the moral principles and what lack relates to is the ego which is in between. From a Freudian approach, the lack of hedonistic features strive us to act on moral principles and vice versa.

There are 3 lacks:

1. Symbolic castration and its object related is the imaginary phallus
2. Imaginary frustration and its object related is the real breast
3. Real privation and its object related is the symbolic phallus

The 3 corresponding agents of the lacks are the real father, the symbolic mother and the imaginary father. Of these three forms of lack, castration is the most important from the perspective of the cure. 

Male Gaze essay

An analysis and application of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ in the film industry

By Chrissy Micklewright

Film narrative and technical conventions having roots in psychology is unavoidable. It is inevitable that a film’s characters or storyline will have a deep-rooted meaning in the director or writer’s life, or maybe even have an unintentional connection to one of Freud’s theories, since everyone behind the creation of films are all human and all have a working mind. Everything in all media is done for a reason, and the reason more often than not has some kind of psychological meaning. 

In this essay, the theory that will be analysed and applied is the feminist theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ by Laura Mulvey. Mulvey states in her essay, Visual and Other Pleasures(1): 

“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 phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”

Simplified, Mulvey believes that women in all media forms are crafted from the point of view of a male, to appeal to males and to show to impressionable women how they should look. The most common form of media that this theory can be applied to is music videos. Young female pop artists have a habit of having aggressively sexualised music videos that pose no necessity or link to the narrative of their songs. On top of that, these music videos often always have male directors and men in the higher-up positions of their record companies telling them what to do. However, for the sake of this essay, only film examples will be analysed.

In John Hughes’ 1985 teen comedy-drama The Breakfast Club(2), there is a scene in which Mollie Ringwald’s character’s crotch is exposed under the table. This is because the camera is positioned to be in the position of Bender’s character as he is under the table looking under her skirt. An important thing to note is that in this scene, Claire (Ringwald) didn’t consent to him looking at her in such a way. It is also something that the film could have progressed in narrative without having the shot. For example, why was it not a long shot of the table, with Claire’s facial expression being present, rather than what Bender saw? Because the cinematographer felt that we needed to see the male point of view, because it is assumed that that is what audiences want to see. 

Films that have female target audiences also have a lot of shots and scenes which cater to the male gaze. For example, Robert Luketic’s 2001 rom-com Legally Blonde(3). The premise of the film is to be empowering and to remind women that they can achieve something as amazing as graduate from the prestigious Harvard law school and that they don’t need men by their side. Though the film is largely comedic and satirical, it does still intend to carry that message. However, Reese Witherspoon’s character, Elle Woods consistently has a man on her mind: the reason why she goes to Harvard is because of her boyfriend leaving her at the start because she is ‘too blonde’ and not serious enough. She also ends up falling in love with a man whilst studying, so whilst the film aims (or claims) to be empowering and quite feminist, the protagonist’s life seems to be incredibly male dominated. In the scene where Elle explains through her video essay to Harvard’s admissions team why they should accept her, a more literal example of the male gaze is displayed. Her ‘video essay’ shows her, bikini-clad in a pool talking about why she should be accepted because she knows about a TV soap and another shot of her walking in a street and literally having a man look at her and cat call. This is a more literal example, with the male gaze being the admissions department overlooking her video and the man who catcalls her. An example of technical conventions being used to portray the male gaze in this film would be the scene in which Elle attends a party in which she was told was a costume party, only to show up dressed as a Playboy bunny despite it not actually being a costume party. The part where the camera follows her walking into the party, following particularly her legs. This is an example of fragmentation. This is when the female body is ‘cut up’, or so to say, through editing to show only a specific part. In this instance, the body part on show is her legs. This practice objectifies women and reduces their entire human body and self to just a specific, overly sexualised part. It’s almost as though men only want to see women for their sexually appealing body parts, rather than their face, voice or mind, thus objectifying the women fragmented. Mulvey stated in Visual Pleasure (1): 

“Woman's desire is subjugated to her image (...) as bearer, not maker, of meaning.”

In this quote, Mulvey talks about how a woman’s worth is reduced from who she is, in her mind, to what she simply looks like and whether or not she is desirable by a man.

Though, not all films follow the typical practice of the Male Gaze theory, and it is not only something that is seen in mainstream cinema. It is represented quite differently in arthouse cinema and more alternative films. Some make a comment on the male gaze from a more ‘meta’ perspective. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 film ‘Rape’ (4) is a film based on the concept of a male gaze, from even before the theory was devised.

Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory can be applied to Yoko Ono’s 1969 art independent film ‘Rape’. During Ono’s film, funded by her husband John, a film crew was hired to follow a young illegal female migrant named Eva Majlata. The film crew followed her and recorded her day’s activities. It is important to note that she did not consent to being filmed and did not give any form of permission. The person who gave permission for her to be filmed was her sister. It is hard to pick apart this film shot by shot, scene by scene, as it is essentially an hour of following a young girl, the cameras' position sometimes varying from behind her to in front of her. 

This film is significant because it is clearly from a male gaze literally, as it is meant to be filmed from the point of view of Eva’s stalker. Simply, the film is following the young girl without her permission, with a handheld camera documenting the stalking. This film is a great example of the male gaze being able to make an audience uncomfortable. It is an example of the male gaze being presented in a non-aggressively sexualised way, but still from a man’s point of view. Deeply disturbing – emotionally and aesthetically. A camera picks up a woman walking on the street and follows her. And follows her. And follows her. Despite her pleas. Because she pleads with the off-screen crew and because she looks directly into the camera, the film becomes an unusual POV/non-POV-hybrid, implicating the audience in this woman's persecution. But, because she speaks German, the film prevents its presumably English-speaking audience from comprehending her objections. Her lack of understandable communication to an English-speaking audience further objectifies her and reinforces that she is not someone to be listened to, but simply someone to be looked at. Her worth to an audience becomes diminished because they don’t know what she is saying, which links back to Mulvey’s quote previously. 

At around 38 minutes in, a scene begins with a close-up POV shot of the cameraman knocking on a red door. His action of knocking the door repeatedly could be significant as it suggests women are reluctant to let men in, and only do so when they feel obliged to after after being pushed into it, linking into the film's title. Funnily enough, in this scene, it isn't even her that lets him in. It appears as though he lets himself in, again, linking back to the title. Once the woman becomes present in the scene, a sense of panic and discomfort is created by the POV camera becoming more fidgety and moving quicker as it tracks her. The shot distance varies from extreme close-ups of her face, to mid-shots of her body, emphasising the cameraman's invasion of her personal space. The camera is also out of focus at many points when it is an extreme close-up of her face. This links into Mulvey's theory of fragmentation. When the camera is close enough to her face to give her an identity and a voice, it becomes out of focus. Perhaps this could be a comment about misogynists refusing to acknowledge their behaviour. 

The use of camera in this film is handheld and is visibly poor quality. The latter is mainly due to the technology of cameras available for independent filmmakers at the time of it being made was quite poor. However, it could be stated that the use of handheld camera is to add a sense of realism, because the film is quite literally real, and a sense of discomfort for the audience. A shaky camera is a cinematic technique that can be used to make the audience feel dizzy, uncomfortable or sick, which is the message John and Yoko are trying to reinforce about the male gaze. Shaky cameras can also be used to emphasise the nervousness or discomfort of the subject being captured by the camera, which is what has been done. Mulvey states that “the position of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire on to the performer.” (1), and that is what is happening throughout this whole film. The audience is both immersed in the perspective of both the man behind the camera and his victim. 

Chris Cunningham’s 1999 music short film for Aphex Twin’s track ‘Windowlicker’ (5/6) is a parody of notoriously misogynistic hip-hop music videos. Conventions of the male gaze are easy to see in this video, with consistent shots of sexualised body parts, again, following the fragmentation theory. The mise-en-scene of the wardrobe choices having the women be scantily-clad as opposed to their male counterparts is a great example of how (although this is a parody – many hip hop music videos follow this therefore it is still a valid point to make) when an artist is male and has the ability to decide how women are represented in their art, the women will be as objectified as possible. Also, referring to Mulvey’s quote about women being ‘subjugated to her image’, all of the women bar the first two in this music video have the face of Richard James (Aphex Twin). Though in this instance it is part of the parody and part of Aphex Twin’s image, it still takes away the women’s personality and what makes them significant from each other. As they don’t have varying faces, they are all pretty much exactly the same and no longer individual people. Objects.

This music video comes from artists from outside the mainstream music video movement. It is more of an external comment, whilst most of the problematically sexualising music videos come from artists who are either being told to sell themselves sexually or exploit themselves knowing they have young, impressionable audiences, further increasing the impact of the male gaze on young women.

Sexualisation of women in the media industry isn't exclusive to live action films, though. In animated media, such as films and games, it is still unfortunately incredibly present. A good example to look at is the 1988 animation/live action hybrid film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (7). The character of the female protagonist Jessica Rabbit is a curvaceous, flirtatious bombshell of a character. Animator Richard Williams described her character to be the "ultimate male fantasy" (8). Jessica Rabbit's character is crafted by an almost all-male animation production team (10), which alone just goes to show that when men in the film industry can literally create a female character, they will make her as unnecessarily sexualised as humanly possible. 

A particular scene in which the sexualisation of Jessica Rabbit's character is the famous 'Why don't you do it right' scene. The scene begins with a long shot of her leg and breast poking out of a stage curtain - fragmenting her as her body parts rather than as a whole human (1). The scene then instantly cuts to Bob Hoskins' character gawking at her. This is a very literal example of the male gaze. This scene displays Jessica as a 'passive erotic object for the gaze of male spectators (1). Also, the comparison of the fact that we can see Eddie Valiant's (Bob Hoskins) facial expression as opposed to Jessica's body parts just goes to show that women are perceived as objects, simple body parts, whereas a man is perceived as emotions, expressions, a presence and a voice - the things that a face alone allows you to have. More value than a woman's individual body parts, it seems. 

The use of camera and lighting is significant to the male gaze theory in this scene. The camera is following Jessica (as if she's a real human character and not a drawing added in post-production), allowing the film's audience to take the role of one of the men from the scene's audience staring at her. Almost like a sense of scopophilia, just not as sexually explicit. The usage of lighting in this scene is particularly important because the spotlight is on her. Everywhere else in the scene is dim - you can't see any of the men unless she is the main focus in the scene (for example, when a man holds his hand out to help her, or when she sits on Eddie's lap, or when puts her foot in a mans' face). We're only allowed to look at her, because she's the focus. 

In conclusion, Laura Mulvey’s theory is incredibly solid and can genuinely be applied to any media with a female present in the product. Even when a film is shot and directed by a woman, each individual shot can be explained to have the reasoning behind it rooted in something reinforced by a man. Even when a film is intended to be empowering for women (Legally Blonde (3)), they still manage to possess some conventions of this theory, especially when most of the senior producers and directors etc are male. Much like Freud’s personality theory (9), it is present in almost all works of media. 

1.    Mulvey, L., 1989. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Film Theory and Criticism, 1 Introduction, A political Use of Psychoanalysis. 1st ed. New York: Macmillan

2.    The Breakfast Club. (1985). [film] Universal.

3.    Legally Blonde. (2001). [film] Directed by R. Luketic. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

4.    Rape. (1969). [film] Directed by Y. Ono and J. Lennon. Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF).

5.    James, R. (1999). Window Licker. [12", CD, VHS] Warp Records. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/track/3aub1GpyKYRd1cVN54bnw6?autoplay=true&v=T [Accessed 24 Jan. 2019].

6.    Windowlicker. (1999). [film] Directed by C. Cunningham. Cindy Burney.

7.    Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. (1988). [film] Directed by R. Zemeckis. Hollywood: Walt Disney Animation Studios.

8.    WEINRAUB, B. (1988). An Animator Breaks Old Rules And New Ground in 'Roger Rabbit'. NY Times. [online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/01/movies/an-animator-breaks-old-rules-and-new-ground-in-roger-rabbit.html.

9.    Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. 1st ed.