Daniel Im

IB Lang 11

Moosman 3

Music Video Analysis

The songs I choose for this are Pretty Hurts by Beyonce, Keep you, by Wild Belle, Never

Knew I Needed, by Ne-Yo, and Losing You, by Solange and all of these music videos were

directed by Meline Matsoukas.

To start off, in Pretty Hurts, it basically shows the stuff hidden from the public in a

beauty pageant.There is all these struggles and practical toruture behind it. When it showed

women dressing up for this pageant, body image things really popped out. A lot throughout the

video showed how these women thought and told that they were too fat even though they were

already skinny. There was also fake tanning, putting white powder on their teeth, forcing

themselves to throw up and other things that were included in “improving” their body image. I

feel the message Matsoukas is how being pretty isn’t the best thing. As can be seen in the music

video, everyone looked miserable. The main character, Beyonce, was constantly sad and

depressed and was only happy when she needed to present herself as happy. She was faking her

happiness. Having the “ideal” body isn’t the best thing because it can be extremely unhealthy

physically and mentally. I feel this is the message. This reminds me of the proposed beauty

standard that has been set by society. This ideal look may be appealing but isn’t something that

should be presented. The product isn’t everything and showing the background is extremely

important, especially with promoting body positivity. I like this video because it shows what it

takes just to be considered beautiful and how it shows that it is not a good thing. The most

effective parts were the zoom ups on her face showing how she actually felt. The parts where
true feelings were expressed were very powerful. I feel that the biggest influence of this video is

the presented body images in movies, ads, games, and social media and how many are believing

this is what one should look like, but this isn’t really a good thing because of how harmful it can

be and Matsoukas wanted to expose this.

In Keep You, by Wild Belle, it shows this little African American boy who has a lot of

influence on women. Belle is with this boy and whenever this Belle did something the boy did

like, he would get mad very easily. Another thing is how he would go and flirt with other girls

even though he knew he was with Belle. I feel the message behind this is how powerful men can

be in society. Children are really seen to have more power over an adult but in this video, a little

boy has so much influence over this older woman. Whenever he did something wrong, nothing

would really happen to him but if a woman did something they did like, he would get very mad

and even storm off. I feel this is addressing gender roles in society and how males are just seen to

be more dominant in society. This reminds me off the older days of America where women

weren’t allowed to do many things and were expected to exist only to support their husbands and

family. However, this isn’t the biggest problem today but this video seems to be telling me that

this still is going on today. I like this video because even though it was a simple video, it has a

much deeper meaning within it that isn’t just about love, but rather gender roles and how we let

it define who we are.

In Never Knew I Needed, by Ne-Yo, it is basically about a man who misses and thinks

about this one girl he was with. Throughout the video, it showed the man walking down this

alley thinking about the times he had with this woman. One noticeable thing was the mood in the

scenes. When he was by himself, it was sad, grey, and overall depressing. However, when there

were scenes with the two together, the overall mood was nice and happy. The color scheme
overall was more pretty and the sun’s rays were much brighter and noticeable. I think Matsoukas

is trying to tell how powerful love can be. How love is the best time of life and how it will turn

dark and gloomy moments to happy and bright moments. An artistic moment was when the two

met each other in the woods and when they kissed, it panned up to two bright stars glowing in

the night sky. I feel its saying that love is like stars and that it is a beautiful thing that is out of

this world.

Finally, there is Losing You, by Solange. In this video, it shows a video of a black

community and one of the things that really stood out was the clothing and actions they did.

More specifically, the stuff that would be racially associated with British people. They are

wearing these bright suits and some even have the UK flag. They are playing the sport croquet

and drinking tea. I feel that the message here is the influence that the British had on the African

community. Especially with the first century of the U.S. and racism in the U.S. How these White

settlers have had a massive influence on this community that it really shaped their clothing and

activities they do. However, another thing that stood out was the community. When they were

with each other, they were very happy and this wasn’t all just acted out. This could even be seen

with the “blooper” at the end when Solange was doing a scene but was just constantly happy

with all these other people with her. I feel the message here is how powerful friendship can be.

Friends are extremely important and it constantly showed how happy and how much fun they

were having together. I really enjoyed this video because it seems to hint about how big the

impact white settlers had on Africans and also that friendship is a powerful thing.

So overall, Melina Matsoukas used technology to propose all these messages to the

general public using different methods of video recording. The use of different colors, clothing,

angles, distance, and more to show and help hint about these messages she has.