Discuss the representation of women in the music video Rip Tide by Vance Joy.

Objectification: Women treated as objects/less than human in media.
Sexualisation: The use of women in media just for sexual pleasure.
Male gaze: The sexual objectification of women in media for mens pleasure.
Voyeurism: Gaining pleasure from watching other people who don't know they're being watched.
Scopophilia: Gaining pleasure from watching other people who don't know they're being watched doing something sexual.

Discuss the representation of women in the music video Rip Tide by Vance Joy.

Introduction:
Definition: Stuart Hall stated that representation is the ways in which a media product constructs the world and aspects in it, including social groups, individuals, issues and events. The producers encode meaning into the representation of these groups. The representation producers encode into the media product can conform or subvert to generic ideology.

Argument: Mixed representation (Polysemic meanings) - Could be an ironic representation of women or could be reinforcing the stereotypical conventions of the representation of women in media.

Context: Vance Joy us a 31 year old Australian singer/songwriter who id signed to Atlantic records.
Riptide was his first single in the Uk going Platinum. His music is a genre hybrid between indie, pop and an alternative style. His music video for Rip Tide has reached almost 300,000,000 views.

Parody of sexism in music videos: book titles "How to photograph girls"
Many shots including women in stereotypically male clothing.
Mid shot of blong women tied to tree - restrictions of women in society criticises the idea that women are the weaker sex. Connotations of being tied down.
Video lacks anchorage - allowing audience to make their own assumptions.
Video is highly polysemic of hegemonic ideologies.
Sexualised images used like referential codes.

Intertextual references of horror films - dark lighting etc
Representation of women in horror films - more vulnerable, not as smart etc

Discuss the representation of women in the music video Riptide by Vance Joy.
Stuart Hall stated that representation is the ways in which a media product constructs the world and aspects in it, including social groups, individuals, issues and events. The producers encode meaning into the representation of these groups. The representation producers encode into the media product can conform or subvert to generic ideology. Mixed representation (Polysemic meanings) - Could be an ironic representation of women or could be reinforcing the stereotypical conventions of the representation of women in media. Vance Joy us a 31 year old Australian singer/songwriter who id signed to Atlantic records. Riptide was his first single in the Uk going Platinum. His music is a genre hybrid between indie, pop and an alternative style. His music video for Riptide has reached almost 300,000,000 views.

On the one hand the representation of women throughout the Riptide music video could have been ironic and designed to criticise the the stereotypical conventions of women in the music video. Evidence of this would be the fact that there are parody's of sexism in music videos because of the fact that an early shot in the video shows a book titled " how to photograph girls". This is effective because it is accompanied with shots of women wearing revealing clothes showing that they have photographed them in a sexual, objectifying way. However, we can infer that this is ironic because of the shot of the book. This is because it is likely that the producers of the music video decided to do this to demonstrate the sexual depiction of women in most music videos and challenge this with a parody of it. To further reinforce this point the music video includes shots that have connotations to spying on people and voyeurism because there is a long shot of a woman standing on a balcony. This is clearly ironic and designed to challenge the representation of women in music videos because, although the shot is depicting the women as there for mens pleasure it is done in a way that makes the audience think that it is creepy and wrong. Additionally, there is a shot of a woman who appears to be undressing as she walks towards the sea which has connotations to scopophillia. This is because, again, the shot has been made to look as if the audience is spying on her and it is sexualised because she is wearing very revealing clothes and appears to be undressing. This links to Bell Hooks' feminist theory because she states that gender determines the way that people are represented in media and as a result, because of the fact that there are a lot of women in the video they are presented in a sexual way. This also appeals to the male gaze because the male audience is supposed to focus on the sexualised parts of the woman. However, this is again, done in an ironic way because of the fact that the shot makes it seem as if it is a bad thing that we are watching her in that way because of the connotations of spying on her. This then links to another feminist theory by Lisbet Van Zoonen because she states that women are only present in media for the pleasure of men.

Alternatively, we can argue that the representation of women throughout the video is challenging to the genre conventions of the music video because of the fact that women are not always presented in a sexual way and there is a lot of unexplained shots that can be down to the audience to decipher the meaning behind. For example, a lot of the shots in the video such as the ones where the woman is being dragged across the floor in the dark, the woman singing and her make-up getting progressively worse and the woman getting stabbed in the hand with the knife all lack anchorage meaning that it is up to the audience to attach their own meaning to the shot. This means that the representation of women subverts from the general stereotypes on how to represent women in media because the audience decides what meaning that want to get from the shot. Furthermore, there is a mid shot of a woman tied to a tree which suggests the way that women have been tied down in society and unable to progress and do the things that they want to because of the restraints that have been put around them.






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