Andrew Goodwin and Laura Mulvey music video theories

Andrew Goodwin’s music video theory:

Andrew Goodwin has identified key features that make music videos a media form. These 6 features are:

There is a relationship between the lyrics of the song, and the music video itself. This could be illustrating the lyrics, giving more in depth detail about them, or just completely contradicting them.

The video itself could illustrate the music, or completely contradict it.
Genres are complex and diverse in terms of music video styles and iconography.
Many close ups of the main artist would be shown by high demand of the record company.
People enjoy watching other people, so this idea is used a lot within music videos.
Intertextual references pleasures the audience.

In terms of how this fits in with our planned music video, for the first point, we are planning to not literally document the lyrics as such as we believe this looks quite cheap and simple, but just keep with the mood of the lyrics. For example, if the person in the song is having an argument, we will not have a really happy moment in the video.

Our selected song is really up beat, and has connotations of it being almost “geezer” like, so in terms of the second point of Goodwin’s music video theory, we will try to aim for a funny and packed music video with a lot going on. We would include as many images of alcohol, cigarettes and perhaps fights as possible.

We will simply have lots of close ups of our main character in our music video in terms of point four. This portrays a star image that everyone loves, and almost idolises. This idea of the main artist being a star makes the video much more appealing to watch, as some audiences might only watch the video for the star. In the video below, you can see that the artist is using many close ups of herself. It is interesting how the music video is one of the first from the artist, so it is helping getting her image across to the public.



In terms of point five, people enjoy watching, or almost spying on other people because they might find them interesting to watch, sexy, or they just like spying. Because of this, the more sexy women that we include, or the more interesting moments that you wouldn’t see everyday, that we include, the better. It gives people a reason to watch the video and provides entertainment.

The intertextual reference that we are including in our music video is the iconic image of Barbie and Ken. This is because they give off the image of the perfect “man and woman” image, but also because many of our audience can relate to them as they may have had one of the dolls when they were younger. This pleasures the audience much more.

Laura Mulvey “Gaze theory”

Laura Mulvey’s “The Male Gaze Theory” was introduced in her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. It consists of three “looks” or perspectives that occur in films that sexually objectify women. These three ideas are:

You put yourself in the position of a male character on screen, and how he perceives the female character.

You put yourself in the position of the audience, and how they perceive the female character on screen.

You put yourself in a male audience’s position looking at a male character on screen, and how he perceives the female character as a “sex object”.

In the music video below, you can see that it relates to the second point of Laura Mulveys theory. This is that you put yourself in the position of the audience, and how you percieve the female characters as being a sex object.



In our music video, we will be creating the third idea. You would put yourself in the position of a male who is watching the music video, and you would react to how the male main character perceives the woman sexually. Because of this, women would not see the sexual side of the music video, however men would, and gain enjoyment from watching it.