Mia-Mae... Stereotype or Subversion?

We looked through our ideas of Gothic Fantasy and the aspects of Gothic and Fantasy which we had learnt through English Literature and other research we've done. We found some similarities between our music video and others of the genre but, there were also ideas which subverted from our chosen genre.

Stereotypes

Our protagonist was a passive character who looked onto the situation without taking any action. She sits back throughout the video and watches situations pass by her.

On our website, we have the girl trapped in the tower. This meets the the stereotype of the passivity of women and how they need a chivilrous man to come save them.

As I study sociology, I introduced Daniella to the theory of a 'bedroom' culture. This is the idea that as girls are more controlled than boys, they develop a situation where they communicate with their friends through phone conversations or over computers. This means that girls have a more advanced grasp of language, according to the theory. I found I could apply this to the music video as the artist wrote the song herself which shows her using language in order to express herself yet does it in passive way which is mostly illustrated by her sitting in a bedroom singing throughout the narrative.

Our colour scheme of pink and black seemed to be a conventional pop/rock yet feminine theme which suggested that the target audience were likely to be young pre teens to teenaged girls.

Subverting

Through our research of artists such as Avril Lavigne and Paramore, we noticed that the Gothic didn't often coinside with this specific genre of music. Even though our style is very similar to those artists, by introducing the Gothic to it, we made it our own orignal idea. The Avril Lavigne website was closer to our first website idea however, we felt that this was too feminine and so we adapted it by using feminine colours but not specifically feminine imagery for our theme.

Unlike many music videos, our artists are not shown to be objectifyed by the male gaze. We noticed that this was not obvious in the videos by Paramore or Avril Lavigne yet, it was hinted through short and tight clothing or having very little flesh covered. In our music video we catogorised the artists as two seperate images. Georgia, was dressed brightly in pink, with her hair straightend potraying a 'girly' character. Our other artist was dressed in dark colours with red hair which gave her more of the 'rock chick' image. These contrasting characters showed what we felt was a more realistic image of what girls tend to look like.