2. Katy Perry
Analyse the key signifiers in the two imagers in front of
you.
Question: What messages about femininity and gender does this
performer embody?
3. Male Gaze
Laura Mulvey believes that women are placed in the media to be
looked at.
She calls this the gaze.
This can be both:
Voyeuristic The notion of looking and gaining pleasure from seeing
these beautiful objects
Fetishistic A more highly sexualised desire to have something,
women are placed as objects of desire.
Therefore The Gaze can is voyeuristic and fetishistic turning women
into a fetish (object) that is beautiful and celebrated for her
looks but considered as an object.
4. Katy Perry
How can we apply Mulveys ideas to a study of women in music
video?
As you watch the following video make a note of how the audience is
positioned as either male or female. And how we are encouraged to
look both voyeuristically and fetishistically.
Does the gaze shift sides in parts? Why is this interesting? Do we
have a female gaze emerging?
5. Dominant Ideology
In what ways does this Music Video conform to dominant
ideology?
6. Gender as a Construct - Butler
Judith Butler says gender is a role we play and we choose to
conform or resist.
She says there are some set rules that are constructed through the
media but we can choose to actively resist these.
Can you think of any celebrity or musician that actively resists
the dominant ideological perspective on gender.
7. Lady GaGa
8. Alejandro
In this video she chooses to subvert traditional gender
stereotypes. Men are shown to be confused with their masculinity in
modern times and women to be more dominant.
We see: the trapped, confused male
Trapped in traditional masculine roles: guard, policeman
On strings: a patriarchal puppet?
Wearing fishnet tights & stillettos; androgyny
9. Men dominated by Gaga
She possesses the phallus
Reverses sexual positioning
Alejandro
10.
Enslaved men, a workforce/soldiers/ sexualised/homo-erotic
11. No identity, uniform - all the same
12. Signifies their entrapment at stereotypes of masculinity:
physical power/strength/heroism
Alejandro
13. Lady GaGa & Femininity
How does GaGa present modern femininity?
Does she conform or resist dominant ideology? Why in each
case?