Our music video both conforms to and subverts the various
tropes and conventions of typical pop music videos. We used a closed structure
as it is a convention of music videos and it is more satisfying for the
audience to have closure. It is ambiguous in the sense that we don’t know where
this boy is going with his life next, but we have the clear, definitive end to
the story and closure as we know he has moved on from the breakup of his
relationship.
Laura Mulvey talks about the male gaze in the media. We challenge the representation of women in music videos. My research shows that 44%-81% of music videos contain sexual imagery. Women are far more likely than men to be presented in provocative or revealing clothing and sexually objectified, often through imagery linked to the sex industry, such as pole/lap dancing. We subvert this convention by having a fully clothed female character presented in a completely non-sexualised way. However, our female does not do any of the singing and is not shown to have any musical ability whatsoever. Women in music videos are frequently portrayed as decorative objects that dance and pose and do not play any instruments.
According the 1999 Children Now report, the majority of male characters in the media are heterosexual, associated with the world of work, and hide their emotions. While we adhere to the convention of the heterosexual character by showing his relationship with a female as well as another male-female romantic relationship, we challenge the other two as our lead protagonist has no association with work during the video and opens up to put his emotions on full display.
Our video adheres to Marx and Gramsci’s idea of hegemony involving the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society, as we feature white characters in a society where other races are still minorities and therefore whites are dominant.
Todorov’s narrative theory dictates that every narrative must follow this structure: equilibrium is disrupted, the characters recognise the disruption and attempt to fix it, and in the end, there is a new equilibrium in place. Our video contains all of the stages of Todorov’s theory, albeit edited out of order for a nonlinear structure. The story begins with the equilibrium of a boy in a relationship with a girl, the disruption is the girl having an affair, the recognition is the boy catching them in the act, the attempt to repair is a conversation between the two to try and work through their issues, and the new equilibrium is the boy having moved on from his girlfriend and happy with the way things worked out. We used this structure because audiences are accustomed to it and comfortable with those kinds of stories.
Vladimir Propp developed a theory about characters in media texts that suggest there are seven broad character tropes in all of the stories he studied. There are: the villain who struggles against the hero; the donor who prepares the hero or gives the hero some kind of magical object; the helper, possibly with magical powers, who helps the hero in the quest; the princess, the person that the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative; the false hero who is perceived as good character in beginning but later emerges as evil; the dispatcher who makes the lack known and sends the hero off; and the hero, also known as the victim, the seeker, the paladin, or the winner, who reacts to the donor, weds the princess, and struggles against the villain. Our video adheres to three of these tropes. Our main protagonist is the hero, the girlfriend who cheats on him is the villain, and the other boy she has the affair with is the helper in a way, because he helped to set the protagonist on the path to true happiness and helped him to realise he’s better off without a partner who is going to cheat on him.
Laura Mulvey talks about the male gaze in the media. We challenge the representation of women in music videos. My research shows that 44%-81% of music videos contain sexual imagery. Women are far more likely than men to be presented in provocative or revealing clothing and sexually objectified, often through imagery linked to the sex industry, such as pole/lap dancing. We subvert this convention by having a fully clothed female character presented in a completely non-sexualised way. However, our female does not do any of the singing and is not shown to have any musical ability whatsoever. Women in music videos are frequently portrayed as decorative objects that dance and pose and do not play any instruments.
According the 1999 Children Now report, the majority of male characters in the media are heterosexual, associated with the world of work, and hide their emotions. While we adhere to the convention of the heterosexual character by showing his relationship with a female as well as another male-female romantic relationship, we challenge the other two as our lead protagonist has no association with work during the video and opens up to put his emotions on full display.
Our video adheres to Marx and Gramsci’s idea of hegemony involving the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society, as we feature white characters in a society where other races are still minorities and therefore whites are dominant.
Todorov’s narrative theory dictates that every narrative must follow this structure: equilibrium is disrupted, the characters recognise the disruption and attempt to fix it, and in the end, there is a new equilibrium in place. Our video contains all of the stages of Todorov’s theory, albeit edited out of order for a nonlinear structure. The story begins with the equilibrium of a boy in a relationship with a girl, the disruption is the girl having an affair, the recognition is the boy catching them in the act, the attempt to repair is a conversation between the two to try and work through their issues, and the new equilibrium is the boy having moved on from his girlfriend and happy with the way things worked out. We used this structure because audiences are accustomed to it and comfortable with those kinds of stories.
Vladimir Propp developed a theory about characters in media texts that suggest there are seven broad character tropes in all of the stories he studied. There are: the villain who struggles against the hero; the donor who prepares the hero or gives the hero some kind of magical object; the helper, possibly with magical powers, who helps the hero in the quest; the princess, the person that the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative; the false hero who is perceived as good character in beginning but later emerges as evil; the dispatcher who makes the lack known and sends the hero off; and the hero, also known as the victim, the seeker, the paladin, or the winner, who reacts to the donor, weds the princess, and struggles against the villain. Our video adheres to three of these tropes. Our main protagonist is the hero, the girlfriend who cheats on him is the villain, and the other boy she has the affair with is the helper in a way, because he helped to set the protagonist on the path to true happiness and helped him to realise he’s better off without a partner who is going to cheat on him.
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