Sexism in music videos

In this blog i will be discussing sexism in different music videos and how they are portrayed to the public,  we will also mainly be looking at Laura Mulveys theory of the male gaze for this as well as that theory goes into a lot of detail about the sexism in pop videos. Laura Mulveys theory states that the camera in any film or music video is shown through the eyes of a male and objectifies women, she says that the male gaze represents women as objects to be admired for their appearance rather than for who they actually are and their personality and it also states that because of this male gaze women are also oppressed when watching these videos as they can only look through a males eyes and not through their own. The theory also states that the women do not move the plot of the movie forward and it is only the male which does, the woman is only there to be with the man and to make him feel more important.

If we are to take this theory of the male gaze and apply it to modern day music videos we can still see that it upholds to this day, if we are to look at a more modern music video such as Nicki Minaj's Anaconda we can see that the male gaze still exists in some cases and women are still sometimes viewed as objects of male desire, we can see throughout the entire music video that instead of talking about self confidence and personality the lyrics instead talk about the female body and also about how much it appeals to the males and also talks about how all of the men want her just because of how she looks compared to the rest of the women. You can also tell that this music video mainly focuses on the male gaze as all of the shots and cinematography seem to mainly focus on the body of Minaj and her butt instead of her face or the rest of the environment.
However there are also music videos which actively go against the male gaze and don't attempt to hide it or anything instead they make the music video and song pretty much for the purpose of going against the male gaze and supporting Laura Mulveys theory. An example of one of these songs is Lily Allen's "hard out here" although some of the cinematography and some of the shots present show off the male gaze and it seems like they support it if you are to listen to or read the lyrics then you will see that it is pretty much all done ironically and they talk about how society is hard on women especially in the media and it also touches on the subject of the glass ceiling and how women kind of have it hard in the working world. This music video was clearly made to spread a message and to help support women around the world.