In this music video for Beyonce's run the world a binary opposite is created between the men and women. The men stand around with riot shields, chains and batons. They have a very anarchistic semiotics. Comparatively the women all look authoritarian with police hats and black leather. This creates the effect of making the women seem calm and collected while the men seem wild but intimidated by the women. Conversely in Dream where representations of gender is not the focus of the video the representation is far more standard. There is puppet girls, representing the working class, as objects of desire in the beginning and mothers towards the end, the mother especially is treated respectfully and is not seen as less for being a young mother. This is a positive representation of gender. However the more interesting representation is the older woman, who represents the establishment and 'ruling classes' who is quietly disapproving or supportive of the things he does and choices he makes throughout, this representation of establishment as a woman could imply that like the establishment older women are inflexible and controlling, which is a negative and stereotypical representation of gender.
The ways that the women are dressed in each music video is also indicative of how they are being portrayed. The women in Beyonce's run the world are dressed provocatively, in black leather and showing a lot of skin. However, rather than this being a negative representation of gender, it is shown as a good thing, implying that they are fashionably and sexually liberated from oppressive patriarchal standards, rather than they being objects of the male gaze. Inversely both the puppet girls and the older woman are dressed extremely modestly in long dresses with plain, muted colours. Both the colours and the style of dress imply control from the woman, who represents the oppressive establishment, 'protecting their modesty' and holding them to backwards patriarchal standards. The shots in which the first girls are shown are also in the closer shots implying the male gaze of the camera, which makes sense in the narrative as the time that happens is when Dizzee is talking about getting girls.
Both the music videos in some way inverse the way that male and female identity expression is portrayed. Gauntlett's identity theory is the idea that the media provide us with 'tools' or resources that we use to construct our identities. The idea that whilst in the past the media tended to convey symbolism, straightforward messages about ideal types of male and female identities, the media today offer us a more diverse range of stars, icons and characters. In Dream there's a representation of a young black father pushing a pram, a very unstereeotypical portrayal for a young black man. However, this portrayal simultaneously conforms to the more traditional idea of the nuclear family which could be said to be reductive. Like wise in Run the world's video and lyrics women are portrayed as explicitly dominant over men, breaking the past media expectation.
Gilroy believes that colonial discourses continue inform contemporary attitudes to race and ethnicity in the post colonial era. Civilisation constructs racial hierarchies and sets up binary oppositions based on notions of otherness to races other than white. As both these songs are by black artists this theory applies to both of their work. The more clear example of this theory is in Dizzee Rascal's video which features mostly black characters in the video's autobiographical narrative. Images of stereotypes like loitering and graffiti surround the black characters as well as the heavily stereotypical scotsman drinking. The most explicit scene of racial bias from this theory would be the police brutality scene with the puppets, showing the racial profiling the artist or people of his race may have experienced. This colonialism is shown to have held him back previously. However later in the video all of them are in a studio away from the policeman outside showing that through their success they overcame racism and colonialism.
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