Kanye West ft Estelle - American Boy from Mauricio Ortega on Vimeo.
Female dominance in Music videos?
Andrew Goodwin pointed out that a repetitive characteristic of pop videos are women being used as an object of male sexual desires in order to attract viewers; this applies especially to genres such as hip hop, rock and pop, however in some case the issue is on the contrary where men are used in videos as objects of female sexual desires.
Estelle's hit number 1 single 'American boy' emulates this with its straight forward illustrative style of her lyrics to the video. She goes againts the typical conventions of pop videos and has several split screens of different men of different ages and races posing in an attractive manner.
She also uses images in the video to illustrate her sensual lyrics, for example..'don't like your baggy jeans but ima like whats underneat erm' with a close up of the groin of a man when she says the quote. She also reverses the theme of men promising women the whole in music videos by almost insisting on her type of guy to be able to buy her alot of clothes and take her around the world, to an extent it can be argued that she does fall into the stereotype however it is the originality that makes it different from what audiences are used to.
In the video Estelle reverses the representation of men from being the dominant gender to the more passive object. Men are represented simply as objects who can take her shopping and holidays with an array of different men popping up on the screen. She wants her men to look a certain way and kanye west personifies her dream american boy and in an unconventional role reversal we can see that of the two artist he is the more passive and the video plays to the appeal of women he is fully focused on Estelle and the way she looks whilst she is the one who faces the camera and sings.
This represents a new wave of women in music who are choosing to go against the orthodox traditions of male dominance in music videos and for women to become a lot less passive, they include other female artist like; Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Madonna including others.
Estelle's hit number 1 single 'American boy' emulates this with its straight forward illustrative style of her lyrics to the video. She goes againts the typical conventions of pop videos and has several split screens of different men of different ages and races posing in an attractive manner.
She also uses images in the video to illustrate her sensual lyrics, for example..'don't like your baggy jeans but ima like whats underneat erm' with a close up of the groin of a man when she says the quote. She also reverses the theme of men promising women the whole in music videos by almost insisting on her type of guy to be able to buy her alot of clothes and take her around the world, to an extent it can be argued that she does fall into the stereotype however it is the originality that makes it different from what audiences are used to.
In the video Estelle reverses the representation of men from being the dominant gender to the more passive object. Men are represented simply as objects who can take her shopping and holidays with an array of different men popping up on the screen. She wants her men to look a certain way and kanye west personifies her dream american boy and in an unconventional role reversal we can see that of the two artist he is the more passive and the video plays to the appeal of women he is fully focused on Estelle and the way she looks whilst she is the one who faces the camera and sings.
This represents a new wave of women in music who are choosing to go against the orthodox traditions of male dominance in music videos and for women to become a lot less passive, they include other female artist like; Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Madonna including others.
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