Music Video Analysis 2

Sophie Boston G325

Chosen Music Video

• I have decided to analyse Beyoncé’s ‘Pretty Hurts’ in terms of Narrative, Audience, Media Language, Genre and Representation. Composed by Australian singer and songwriter Sia, the song was originally offered to pop artists Katy Perry and Rihanna, both who declined to take the offer. Beyonce then heard it and wanted it instantly. The song gained much attention, reaching 1st place in the US Hot Dance Club Songs Billboard and 8th in the UK R&B Offical Charts.

• "Pretty Hurts" is a self-empowerment pop song discussing society beauty standards and analyzing female body image. Beyoncé decided to record it to show the negative effect of beauty pageants and expectations on how women should look.”- Wikipedia

Pretty Hurts :Narrative• Pretty Hurts is all about the narrative, the story behind the video. It tells the

story of how much pain women have to go through in order to be classed “beautiful” in today’s society – even to the point of risking their lives. It also follow Goodwin’s theory of relating the lyrics to the visual.

• The music video has 3 main structural narratives to it: 1) Equilibrium – Beyonceappears happy and beautiful and composed on stage, smiling as though she loves the life she is living. 2) Disequilibrium – The audience sees what is going on behind doors, the pain the pageant women have to suffer in order to be ‘beautiful’ and in this section Beyonce continues to smile at the camera though it falters a lot and we see her beginning to regret her decision to become involved in the pageants 3) New Equilibrium – At the end of the video, Beyonceis seen smashing her pageant trophies and her pageant sash left on a chair, which indicates she has left the pageant life and started a new life for herself, one which doesn’t include needles or cotton wool balls. This narrative structure ties in with Todorov’s theory about simple narratives.

Pretty Hurts :Narrative

Pretty Hurts :Audience• Beyonce’s video is very eye catching and will appeal to many audiences, especially her

young female teenage fans, who might feel this way about themselves and who maybe wanted to become a pageant contestant. The lyrics, and the video may encourage them to view themselves differently and realise that they are beautiful. This video may also appeal to fellow pageant contestants who may also feel like Beyonce and needing a way out and this song may just give them the boost to do it. The song and video may also appeal to male viewers, in that whilst capturing the male gaze (Laura Mulvey) in skimpy outfits, Beyonce is also trying to give the impression that society (male and female) should stop objectifying each other so much and that beauty shouldn’t be a competition -"Blonder hair, flat chest/ TV says bigger is better/ South Beach, sugar free/ Vogue says thinner is better.“

• Because Beyonce is singing about such a highly popular subject, this video and the lyrics apply to any of the demographic classes and though maybe Beyonce is considered a mainstream pop artist, her singing subject is one that is a problem worldwide, so even the individualists will listen and watch her video.

• Beyonce has also in the past classed herself as a feminist and this song and the lyrics strongly highlight her passions here. Pretty Hurts has been linked to feminism - it is intended as a self-empowerment anthem for women as Beyoncé sings negatively of beauty stereotypes and expectations on how women should look which are often "impossible" and created mostly by the society.

Pretty Hurts :Audience

Pretty Hurts :Genre

• The Genre of Pretty Hurts is pop with R&B undertones and has especially strong, soulful vocals from Beyonce, which give the song a sense of power that other pop songs may not have. The dark soulful tones in this song contrast again Beyonce’s normal upbeat pop tracks.

• Because this is a pop song, conventions are typically loud female vocals, sometimes high pitched, rhyming lyrics, bright costumes and lots of outfit changes, and colourful and obscure props and settings. Whilst Pretty Hurts does cover these conventions, it follows a more dark colour scheme to fit in with the controversial theme.

Pretty Hurts :Genre

Pretty Hurts :Media Language and Representation

• Though ‘Pretty Hurts’ is quite a straight forward linear music video but there are moments in the video that are significant, because it is a signifier or symbol that represents a deeper meaning. For instance:

• - The yellow outfits the contestants all wear, yellow is meant to connote happiness, yet really it’s just masking what they truly feel. All the outfits in fact, the glitz and the glam plus the smiles just hide the horrible truth of what these women go through in order to appear on the stage.

Pretty Hurts :Media Language and Representation

• Beyonce appearing as Miss Third Ward – this is actually a reference to her hometown of Houston, which she also mentions at the end of the video in a video footage of her younger self. This is going to appeal to her fans who may already know this and also to the people that shared memories of her when she was younger.

• The difference in hair length – Beyonce’s hair changes from short to long at various times during the video. Long hair is meant to be a sign of femininity, and none of the contestants have short hair, which highlights this stereotypical feature. It seems that Beyonce has to hide who she truly is to become something deemed as beautiful and feminine.

Pretty Hurts :Media Language and Representation

• The trophies – shows that through all her pain, Beyonce has managed to win all these trophies, and before they gave her joy to look at, but now, they remind her of what she has had to go through in order to achieve them.

"I had this image of these trophies and me accepting these awards and kind of training myself to be this champion. And at the end of the day when you go through all of these things, is it worth it? I mean, you get this trophy and you're like, 'I basically starved. I have neglected all of the people that I love. I've conformed to what everybody else thinks I should be and I have this trophy. What does that mean?' The trophy represents all of the sacrifice I have made as a kid, all of the time that I lost.“ –Beyonce Knowles

Pretty Hurts : Postmodernism

• ‘Pretty Hurts’ is an excellent case study of Post Modernism as it follows the aspect of

Postmodernism that says that reality and media have blurred together and we live in a unrealistic world

that is defined by what the media presents to us i.e. Hyper-reality. Even within the lyrics, Beyonce

displays the conflict in the media of what makes a woman ‘perfect’:

“Blonder hair, flat chestTV says bigger is betterSouth beach, sugar free

Vogue saysThinner is better”