Deconstruction of Music Video- Girls-1975

 

 The 1975 are an upcoming band who have a large youthful audience. In this video they utilise the performance element of the song giving is a feel of live performance and emphasise the use of all their instruments and the vocals. By shooting them individually it shows the different instruments in action and gives all aspects of the band a lot of airtime, which promotes the band to a wider audience of people who enjoy certain instruments as they can see first hand each band members contribution to the song. However, there are also shots of the band as a unit which helps show the overall picture and what it looks and sounds like when all elements are brought together. In this video, Laura Mulvey’s theory of “male gaze” is apparent though the many shots focusing on females which coincide with the lyrics which are also fairly female based. The women modelled in the video are wearing very little clothing, which is what gives the impression that men would see them as objects. An effect of slow motion is also used on a woman which draws even more attention to her and allows the audience to focus on the female contribution to an even greater extent. However, the male in the video is also topless which represents the song title of “girls” as well as bringing the idea of equality between the two figures of different genre. This contradicts the idea of male gaze theory in this video as some of the attention is on the man, which suggests that the woman is there for more of a purpose than to be looked at. The shot of the man pushing the female suggests that despite the equal roles, the man seems to act as though dominant. The clothing in the video plays a large role in the construction of characters. It is mostly black and white shirts with skinny jeans for men and the woman is in rather revealing shorts with messy hair which support the lyrics and the meaning of the song. The transitions are mostly jump cuts which change on the sound of the beat, which is very common in music videos of the indie rock genre. There are very quick transitions through the performance to to keep the visuals as up beat as the lyrics and they slow down during the narrative to allow the audience to keep up. The shots used are mostly close –ups to emphasis the expressions on the faces of the people in the video.