Representation of gender

The music video will represent the idea of a patriarchal society. The main female protagonist will stick to the stereotypes and ultimately be represented as weak and out of control. The girl’s conscience will be played by a male, and at the end of the music video it is shown that he takes over, this is representative of a patriarchal society where men are stronger than women. Although nowadays men and women are shown as more or less equal, back through the years there would be a patriarchal society and traditional fairy tales typically stick to this; where in which the female protagonist is portrayed as the ‘princess’ character and ultimately has to be saved by the male ‘hero’ in Vladimir Propp’s character theory.

Even without the antagonist’s gender being shown, the audience would automatically assume they are male. This shows that even in this day and age, we still assume that men are stronger and more threatening in a patriarchal society. As previously said, at the end of the music video he completely overpowers the girl and takes over. As well as representing the antagonist as powerful it also emphasises the girl’s vulnerability.

The girl obviously feels dominated by males in her life and this could possibly be because of the patronising/violent nature of a male figure such as a father or boyfriend. The audience do not know the girl’s circumstances or background, only that she is very blatantly in distress and feeling lonely. Feeling lonely is something not associated with females because they are represented as having a large group of friends or one or two close friends.