Music Video Analysis 3

Title: Right There
Artist: Nicole Scherzinger
Album: Killer Love
Producer: Jim Jonsin
Genre: Pop
Release Date: 6th June 2011 (UK)

This music video for Nicole Scherzinger's 'Right there' demonstrates what is known in the media industry as 'the male gaze'. This describes the way in which the camera scans up and down the female body as if from the perspective of a heterosexual man.

Although similar to voyeurism, the male gaze, introduced by Laura Mulvey, seeks to suggest the power of men over women, whereas voyeurism focuses on the sexual activity. There is evidence of both theories in this video.

Gender and representation has a major influence in the video. For example the whole cast of dancers are female, and throughout the video no males are shown. The song itself is metaphorically all about sex.

The following 5 screens grabs are all within the first 9 seconds of the video. They all show Nicole in explicit sexually associated and revealing positions which could be perceived as dehumanisation. 

The screen grabs below show the downward movement of the camera on Nicole further supporting the male gaze.

There is an amplifying relationship between lyrics and visuals during the video, for example when Nicole sings 'put your hands on my body' she is shown dancing backwards with her hands on her stomach.

A second example is 'me like the way he go down down down down...' is accompanied by Nicole bending down with her legs apart. Matching visuals and lyrics enable the audience to engage further in the song because they are exposed to both phonological and visual information which requires less deep thought processing.

In this shot the camera is looking slightly down on Nicole which could symbolizse a males perspective because males tend to be larger in height in comparison to females. It could also suggest he is superior to her as he is higher up. This joined with her open armed gestures and lack of clothing causes her to appear like his slave.

The video shows numerous shots in which the audience literally can't even see the dancers faces, focusing their attention on the girls figures.

Another sexual reference is specific dance moves with the girls legs wide open.

The majority of video is of the star, Nicole Scherzinger, this consists of lots of close ups of her to highlight 'orgasmic' facial expressions.