The video I chose to analyze is Beyoncé Knowles’ “Pretty Hurts,” from her album "Beyoncé" which was released in 2013. The music video was directed by Melina Matsoukas. The song starts off with a pageant host asking Beyoncé, who plays a pageant contestant, what is her aspiration in life and Beyoncé answers “to be happy.” To me, the song "Pretty Hurts," means someone who goes above and beyond to try and fit in and be something they are not. In the end, they may become what they have been trying to become but deep down inside they still will not be happy with themselves. The song “Pretty Hurts” is a voice that targets young girls and portrays a mother’s contradiction. The music video however, signifies the reality of life and sets a mood to the viewers.
The beginning of the song creates the setting of the video, a pageant scene.All the other characters in the music video are all representative in the same way. All the women in the beauty pageant all feel the pressure of what is expected of them to reach societies beauty standards.
The main message that is presented in the music video is self-empowerment. The video discusses society beauty standards and analyzing female body image. The song goes on and Beyoncé begins to sing about how her mother always told her that beauty is all that matters in this world: “Mama said, "You're a pretty girl, what's in your head, it doesn't matter.” The chorus of the song contradicts what her mother tells her because the chorus sings about how women struggle to be perfect to fit society’s standard of beauty. Beyoncé also sings about how people should not focus only on physical beauty because that is not all that matters instead they need to focus on the beauty within which is self-love. The song is about loving oneself and not striving for perfection because we all know no one is perfect.
The lyrics also work with the mise-en-scene and contribute to the representation. For example 'Perfection is a disease of a nation'. 'It my soul that needs the surgery'. 'Ain't got no doctor or pill that can take the pain away'. All the lyrics represent a powerful message about how society idea of perfection can make people feel.
In the music video Beyoncé plays a pageant contestant who strives to be perfect to fit in with the other girls she is competing with, but no matter how hard she tries she cannot succeed. The music video to “Pretty Hurts” would be considered a conceptual video because the purpose of the video was not to tell a story but to create a certain mood. The mood that the video created for me was sympathetic. After watching the video, I had the feeling of sympathy for girls in this day in age who look at this type of video and wish to be what Beyoncé and those other girls are, which are skinny, and beautiful. What really hits me the most is when Beyoncé is asked what her aspiration in life, and as it keeps repeating within each of the shots, especially the ones where she is looking into the mirror, it sends such a spine tingling message, saying that you should live to be happy with you as yourself, and not to change for anyone else.
Going onto the Media Language and representation, Beyoncé appearing as Miss Third Ward – this is actually a reference to her hometown of Houston, which she also mentions at the end of the video in a video footage of her younger self. This is going to appeal to her fans who may already know this and also to the people that shared memories of her when she was younger.
The difference in hair length – Beyoncé's hair changes from short to long at various times during the video. Long hair is meant to be a sign of femininity, and none of the contestants have short hair, which highlights this stereotypical feature. It seems that Beyoncé has to hide who she truly is to become something deemed as beautiful and feminine.
Pretty Hurts’ is an excellent case study of Post Modernism as it follows the aspect of Postmodernism that says that reality and media have blurred together and we live in a unrealistic world that is defined by what the media presents to us i.e. Hyper-reality. Even within the lyrics, Beyonce displays the conflict in the media of what makes a woman ‘perfect’: “Blonder hair, flat chest TV says bigger is better South beach, sugar free Vogue says Thinner is better."
No comments:
Post a Comment