Music videos and 'self- promotion'

Research for Music Videos

I think over the last 20 years, the purpose of music videos have changed masively. For example music video's back in the 80's/90's (in my opinion) were more about telling a story or trying to send out a positive message to the audience. However, music videos nowadays seem to be focused more on trying to promote the artist, as well as trying to promote their image and their sexuality. I'm going to compare Tiner Turner's song 'What's love got to do with it' with Rihanna's song- 'S&M'

This video was released in 1984 and was the UK's 17th  best selling single in the same year.

In this video, I think Tina Turner's purpsose is to try and relate to women that have been effected by love (for example, if they have been heart- broken before, or are currently feeling heart- broken). I can suggest this as some of the lines of the chorus goes "what's love got to do, got to do with it?..... Who  needs a heart when a heart can be broken?".

I would describe this video as an amplification (from Andrew Goodwin's theory) as it doesn't directly tell the story of the lyrics, however the lyrics closely links to the performance in the video.

Now, let's compare this video to a very recent video from Rihanna.

This video to this song was released in January thid year, so its a very recent video!

As you can see this is very explicit, very sexual and the main focus is on Rihanna. The concept of this song is "sex". As she talks heavily about it in her lyrics. For example, in the chorus she sings "Cause I may be bad but I’m perfectly good at it, sex in the air I don’t care I love the smell of it". Her lyrics are promoting sex and she is expressing how much she enjoys it. In the video Rhianna is showing a lot of flesh as she is half naked most of the time! There are many elements such as the mis-en-scene in the video that promotes and connotates sex (such as sex toys, half naked males and females and so on). Rihanna portrays herslef in a very sexual way (which will be very appealing to the male eye). Rihanna is definately trying to promote herself as well as her body!

I took some screenshot from her music video to try and show what I mean. As you can see, without even watching the video, you can tell from my collage that the video is very explicit, promoting sex and portraying Rihanna in a very sexual way. No doubt that this music video is a softer version of a pornographic video. This video was even banned in some countries!

Comparing these two images together, Rhianna is mostly portrayed in a very sexual way,which is targeted at men. However, in Tina Turner's video, there are mainly close ups of her face as she's singing, and there is no sign of her promoting sex or trying to portray herself in a sexual way.

I think the function/ purpose of a lot of music videos today have very much changed! Sex is promoted more and there is less focus on trying to send a positive message to an audience. It seems to be more about 'image' as artisits show off their beauty and bodies.....