Beyoncé – If I Were a Boy

Representation

Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or written form as well as still or moving picture

What is Representation?

Laura Mulvey argues that cinema positions the audience as male. This applies to the video we are analysing as the woman wishes that she has the same status as a man and when listening to the lyrics and watching the video we are able to tell that she believes that men are the dominant sex. Through the use of camera, women are seen as objects on the screen through the use of eye line match.

Stuart Hall argues that the media does not portray reality accurately but they construct it as to what they see as ideal. This can be applied to the video that we are analysing as the status amongst men and women has been a social construct which has evolved to there being more equal opportunities, however men are still seen as the more dominant sex as for example the woman made the man breakfast and she was expected to be fine with whatever he was doing – for example the supposed affair.

Representational Theory

The entire video is filmed in a greyscale, this symbolically signifies the oppression of women in the clip

In the first half of the video, the domestic roles have been reversed, for example: man provides the breakfast for the female character which opposes the stereotypical household roles of the woman being a housewife.

The female character is seen to be in control and dominates the male character through her physical job as a police officer. In terms of MES, her uniform is very masculine which reaffirms the contrasting ideology of the woman dominating the man.

Through ideologies of feminism, the man in a relationship would be dominant and would be allowed to do what ever he wanted to do. This is opposed in this video through the trait of loyalty shown when he turns down the invite to go out with the women after work

As the roles between the man and woman reverse, a close up, high angle shot is used to highlight how the man is now in control and that everything has gone back to ‘normal.’

Analysis of Video – Key Points