PowerPoint presentation on the theories of music videos.

1. MUSICVIDEO
THEORIES
A level music video project

2. Goodwin'sTheory
Goodwin Identified 6 key aspects the audience should look for when analysing music
video’s:
■ Relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals; illustrating,
amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
■ A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals; illustrating,
amplifying or contradicting the music.
■ Genre - related style and iconography present.
■ Star image, multiple close-up shots of the main artist or vocalist.
■ Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
■ Intertexual references to other media texts maybe present.

3. Relationship between the lyrics and the
visuals
■ Andrew believed that a music video can promote a song by though the way it analyses
the lyrics.
■ This is shown in many music videos when a character does exactly what the song says.
■ An example is when the song lyrics are jump! Jump! Jump! And on the music video
there are characters/actors actually jumping.

4. A relationship between the music and the
visuals
There are three ways visuals are used to promote a song :
■ Illustrate, music videos use certain images & shots to illustrate/explain the meaning of
lyrics to their song and the genre.
■ Disjuncture. Is this situation, the meaning of the song is completely ignored in the
music video.
■ Amplify repeatability -This is when the images and camera shots are manipulated and
shown repeatedly through out the music video and is drummed into our vision.

5. Genre - related style and iconography present.
■ These are depicted as the certain traits associated with a particular music genre.
■ For example a rock video you would expect to have the performance of a live band.
■ For grime it adopts several characteristics of different genres as it is a new genre. In
typical grime videos you would expect them to have the following characteristics as a
must; Jewellery, a narrative based story, hoods and ‘urban’ clothing, a trait of many
grime songs is to perceive the artist as if he/she is just writing the music.This can be
seen in American hip-hop video’s such as Stan by Eminem.
■ Also to appear good looking and sexy is a characteristic adopted from R&B.

6. Star Image
■ Lots of camera shots making him/her the centre of attention.
■ Goodwin referred to the star image a as a very vital aspect of a music video, they make
the music video look more appealing to the audiences and bring a unique style to the
video in the way they are portrayed.
■ The start image is always very unique in the way he presents himself, the costume,
moves and appearance.
■ This helps to promote the artist/star’s image in public and also helps to promote the
video and helps to build a public reputation.

7. Voyeurism
■ Voyeurism is the practice of gaining sexual pleasure from watching others when they
are naked or engaged in sexual activity.
■ Goodwin argued that a female performer will frequently be objectified in this nature
through the use of camerawork and edited in a fragmented sequence.This
emphasises the sexual image of the star.
■ Male performers are instead exploited within a music video to flatter their ego. For
example, the women around them with minimal clothing.

8. Intertextual References
■ The purpose of intertextuality in music videos is to give the audience something
familiar to recognise to generate nostalgic associations with the video and song or
create new meanings to the song for that person.
■ This is more evident in music videos with intertextuality than other forms of media,
like television shows, who commonly use it as advertisement.
■ Another purpose of intertextuality is to help tell the story of the song within the music
video, using a reference to a form of literature or film would be the best way for this to
be accomplished and most easily recognised by the audience.

9. Mulvey’s Male GazeTheory
■ the male gaze is the act of depicting the world and women in the visual arts and in
literature from a masculine and heterosexual point of view, which present women as
objects of male pleasure.
■ The theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human identity, relegating
them to the status of objects to be admired for physical appearance
■ The theory also suggests women can more often than not only watch a film from a
secondary perspective and only view themselves from a mans perspective.

10. Male Gaze Continued…
■ The male gaze leads to Hegemonic ideologies within our society Hegemonic this
means to be ruling or dominant in a political or social context
■ Mulvey states that the role of a female character in a narrative has two functions:
1.As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view
2.As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view