Representations:


Music videos offer excellent material for analysing the processes of representations.


Voyeurism:

This idea comes from the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud and originally refers to the notion that erotic pleasure may be gained by looking at a sexual object. While watching a film, we are all voyeurs, it is argued, but film presents us with a variety of pleasures, not exclusively sexual ones.


It has been proposed (principally by Laura Mulvey, 1975) that, because the filmmakers are predominantly male, the presence of women in film is often solely for the purposes of display (rather than for narrative purposes). Despite many subsequent detractions and revisions of 'gaze theory', in it's simplest form, the arguement is thought-provoking in the context of an analysis of representation in music videos.


Gooodwin:
Goodwin argues that the female performer is frequently objectified in this fashion, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star. This idea becomes more complex when we see the male body on display- the post-feminist 'female gaze' where women are no longer just objects of the look, but exercise some power by looking at men as sex objects too.