Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Example: 5. Reference to the notion of looking...

The audience are often invited to look in a voyeuristic way, particularly at the human body and intimate moments, as they can enjoy a voyeuristic or scopophilic pleasure from doing so.

Goo Goo Dolls- 'Iris'

In this video the viewer is openly invited to look (as if) through a telescope at the narrative with Nicholas Cage and a woman. However, I think this is perhaps more a way of linking the performance with the narrative than to give the audience pleasure (sexual or otherwise) as the clips appear to be from a film, and so we just get an impression of seeing clips from a storyline that we are quite distanced from. There isn't really a voyeuristic element to this, I personally feel, as the lead singer, though looking at the characters through telescopes does not appear to do so with shame or his own sexual pleasure in mind, but in a sort of godlike/watching over them way. It seems more paternal, or like an omnipresent god keeping an eye on them.

Kylie Minogue- '2 Hearts'

In this video the audience is invited to watch Kylie as if they are in the audience and she is performing to them live in a seductive way. The eye contact accompanying her 'sexy' movements achieves this. The audience is being invited to get scopophilic pleasure from this video.

Sir Mixalot- 'Baby got back'

Theres alot of objectifying of the body in this video.
The way the women's bodies, not their faces, are what the camera is focused on, causes the audience to feel that their attention is also be drawn and focused onto these women's bodies. The camera tells the audience where to look, so when the camera is framed tightly on a woman's bum, then the audience feel that they are directing their own attention at the bum and hence are objectifying and watching the female body. This is also encouraged by the camera steadily zooming in closer to the body.

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