Boys: Original video analysis

Artist: Charli XCX
Album: Boys (Acoustic)
Released: 2017
Label: Asylum; Atlantic UK
Producer(s): Jerker Olov Hansson; Cass Lowe (add.)
Genre: Pop

Plot Summary:

The video features and represents men through the eyes of women. The video is filled with cameos by well known pop stars and musicians, YouTubers and Vloggers. The video features them doing various things and activites that women consider as attractive, such as lifting weights, playing with puppies and eating cupcukes. The overall feel of the video is rather wholesome and sensual.

Mis En Scene

Technical codes: Camera angles and shots

Symbolic codes:

Colour pallette: poppy pastel colours, like pinks and blues. Sudden bop pf pastel as well as skin tones

Costume: Urban clthes that are considered as ‘sexy’ by women. Loose button downs, sometimes no shirt at all. Pastel t shirts.

Setting: Multiple settings such as ball pits, garages, car washes but mostly pastel sets containing objects such as cakes

Acting: MOstly natural, men behaving as themselves

Music Video Textual Analysis

Ideology: Men are beautiful just the way they are. No matter what their colour, shape or size.

Themes, components and concepts: Feminism, body positivity, Theory of voyerism, Seduction by men to women, Youth, beauty, Female gaze, Breakdown of toxic masculinity.

Target audience: Men who love themselves just the way they are. Men who need to embrace body positivity. Female heterosexual audience. Men who are attracted to men. Men who are feminine and need to embrace themselves.

Represtentation: White male, white upper class males, blavk males, asian men, homosexual men. Fathers, rappers. Men who are feminine. Men who love thgemselves. Famous pop stars and the music industry.

Music Video theories

1. Freud’s visual pleasure theory

Seductive gazes straight at the camera suggest the rawness and the rough nezs. It is visually plasing and appealing to women.

2. Female Gaze

Men are seen through the perspective of women doing things that considered sensual.

3. Genre theory: Andrew Goodwin

Since it is a pop song, it is glittery, extravagant, shows glamour and objectifies men. And objects in the pop and stand out.