Feminist Responses to Music Videos

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Having already addressed the cultural issues that surround music videos, I thought it would be best to look into feminism, and how music can influence feminist responses. In order to do this, I analysed the record-breaking music video 'Wrecking Ball' by Miley Cryus. 

This video was released by Miley Cryus, and within the first 24 hours of it's released it exceeded views of 38,000,000 views. The music video begins showing an close-up shot of Miley crying into the camera, questionably reflecting her emotions about her current relationship that is speculated to be rocky. Then, the music video suddenly moves to show a very literal demonstration of her lyrics. The dominant props on the video are the 'wrecking ball' and also the walls being demolished in the background; reasonably relating to the title of the song. However, the controversy is introduced when Miley sits in various states of undress, and at some points completely nude on this 'wrecking ball'.

The video heavily symbolises objectification and sexualisation, her emotions and behaviour are being controlled by a male, which says something in itself. She is portrayed as weak, and defenseless. Miley herself is not a bad singer, so the reasons behind why she feels like she has to get completely naked are not evident.

Miley has come forward and tried to defend her actions in the video, claiming several pragmatics behind her actions on camera. However, this video struck up a negative feminist response. video became most viewed video on YouTube in only 13 hours, so what does this say about the sexualisation and objectification of females? It is questionable whether this video was so popular and successful because of the nudity and sexual themes promoted by Miley, or because of the song itself. If this video is successful because of things like the nudity it features, this sends out a very negative message to young girls and women. Miley is basically promoting the idea that for young women to be noticed and be successful they have to sexually objectify themselves - and in this case it appears to have worked.

This poses a huge worry for feminists, as she is not gaining respect from men, is represented as inferior and is successful because of the way she sexually objectifies herself not because of her music abilities or knowledge.

In our video therefore, it is important that we represent both males and females in an equal manner and give them equal power in their relationship as not to suggest dominance and control on a high level by either gender. We need to make sure that both the male and female characters are shown to have the same levels of control at different points in the video. This could be an issue we need to address in our video as the female is represented as quite vulnerable and the male has power over her, however we feel that by in the end the female walking away from the male and the male being pictured in a negative light, this will equalise this power between them as well as reflecting reality.

We have planned in our filming for the use of the 'male gaze', and although this is argued to oppose feminist views, we will make sure that it is put into context within the story line and so it is clear what is going on and the female character isn't pictured as inferior in any way.

Laura Mulvey who invented the 'Male Gaze' concept 

The 'male gaze' is a concept proposed by Laura Mulvey. She suggested that the male gaze occours when the camera is centered around a sexual/attractive feature of a females body. This objectifies and degrades woman to a certain extent, and so although we are using it to make certain themes and feelings obvious to the audience, we need to make sure it is within context and not on a frequent level.

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