HR: Female Representation Research

• In Right By My Side by Nicki Minaj ft Chris Brown directed by Benny Boom in 2012, there is only one female which is the artist herself. She has a distinct grain of voice and style that differs from many other artists, so she tends to convey a lot of aspects of the Mulvey theory. One of these is women as child. She refers to herself as “Barbie” as a part of her image, so she is wearing brightly coloured clothes in one scene of the video where she receives a car as a present from the male.

•  She gets picked up by him just as adults toss little children so she is acting sweet and innocent which is appealing to the male audience as it shows they are protecting the female, and the females can relate as it is an image that most women would like to happen to them. Linking on with this idea of ritualisation of subordination is the scene where she receives a coin to throw into the well, she does licensed withdrawal where she looks away from the male. It shows that she is not aware of what is going on as all the gifts she is receiving is a surprise to her.

• Nicki Minaj is well know from having breast implants. This artificial look is inaccurate of how most females look, so men tend to expect other woman to look like this. During the rap where the beat is faster, she shows off these assets by leaning forwards towards the camera which is one of the voyeuristic treatments of the female body. Another is of her backside where she walks away from the camera to the beat of the music moving it from side to side.

•  As the genre of R&B is mainly focused on the sexual nature of females, this is conveyed visually for audiences. When the rap is about to start, there is a pan of her bare legs. This dismemberment detracts from thinking about women as people, but instead objects for the males pleasure.

• The feminine touch conveys that a person or object is desirable, so Nicki Minaj tends to hold onto the men in the music video a lot. An example of this is when a male and her are shopping and she is hanging onto his arm while he is holding all the shopping bags which is a function ranking that women are to be pictured supporting the male while he does the hard work. She also hugs him a lot which is another physical sign of protection.

• The men in the music video frequently reference to the notion of looking. An example of this is when there is a shot of a car’s rear-view mirror and we can see his eyes hidden by glasses which is fetishistic because it insinuates that he is looking at Nicki Minaj secretly.
• Another example is when the male and Nicki Minaj are in the café and the camera is being shown from inside of the car’s windscreen as there is a reflection in the corner so it parallels with the scene at the beginning of the video where he is looking at her in the car. The camera is below the males eyeline to make them seem bigger than usual physically and socially as it reflects that men are more powerful than women, and it plays with Mulvey’s theory of relative size as women are almost always pictured to be shorter than men. The man is most of the time shown in slow-motion. This technique is used usually to recapture a key moment in a text, so in the music video, the focus is on the male as it is who Nicki Minaj is singing about. 

• When she is rapping, there is another male in the shot sitting on the floor with her. This is a less conventional approach as both genders are at the same level and in media this can be represented as lowering yourself in a social situation physically, plus the female is the predominate figure in the shot, it could have easily be done without him in it, but by putting the male in the shot where he is bobbing his head in time with the music could be shown that he is agreeing with what she is rapping about.

•  For the final shot of the music video, there is a kiss but instead of it being initiated by the man, it is by the woman. This goes against Mulvery’s theory as she said that sex is about male aggression and female submission, but these have been turned around as the final person you see is Nicki pulling an aggressive facial expression towards the camera as if she was being protective of him, or that it reflects the forwardness of her leaning in for the kiss.