SWEET NOTHING

C A LV I N H A R R I S F T. F L O R E N C E W E L C H

The introduction of this video lasts 55 seconds which typical of a pop music video as they like to have a backstory to a video, which makes it quite film like. Rick Altman’s theory would state that this is a syntactic element of pop music videos as this is a theme you would expect to see. This is emphasized by the fact that there seems to be some kind of a past love story between Florence and a man. Additionally, there is a lot of cross cutting between Florence and this man, which forges a strong link between them. These shots are both of their backs, which again, shows that they are linked.

The colours are very representative and show that the man is quite sad about their relationship break up, but Florence is angry which is shown with the red low key lighting

Florence’s appears differs greatly to the representation of the rest of the women in this video. She is wearing a suit and tie, whereas the rest of the women are wearing black lace underwear, portraying them as being sexual objects which plays in Shuker’s theory of the male gaze. Women in their bras are the main focal point of the shots due to them being quite central in the frame. The camera tilts down on them which gives the illusion of someone checking them out, whereas Florence has mainly close ups of her face and she is not sexualized.

Florence’s representation changes when she starts to take of her clothes as she starts to sing more powerfully. The nature of her taking of her clothes is not over sexualized like you would expect to see in music video (no slow mo editing techniques are used and there is no wind blowing her hair back). Instead, this process seems liberating and shows a great deal of emotion and anger. Later on, there are slow mo’s of her, but they are of her being angry and in emotional pain

OVERALL…

This video paints a very bad picture of what the world is like- prostitution, drugs and violence are all heavily featured in this video. The are sematic elements of pop music videos and we expect to see these sorts of things when watching a pop video. However, you would expect to see these things in genres such as rap which illustrates Robert Stam’s theory that genre is hard to define and is a concept made up by theorists and critics.