The idea of Voyeurism arouses from Freud Sigmund the famous psychologist who stated that by looking we gain sexual pleasure within the world of cinema.
Both voyeurism and the notion of looking within all music videos nowadays and it is how artists sell their music using the idea of 'sex appeal'. This idea is mainly aimed at males where in which females within the music video act extremely seductively using their body language and facial expressions. The clothes worn by women is also of a sexual nature things such as bikinis and mini skirts and shorts are extremely common and this is done to keep the audience glued to the screen. Camera angles such as low angle shots and extreme close ups are used in order to emphasise the actresses best features which in music videos will commonly be face, breasts, midriff, bottom and legs. This is evident in the music video 'satisfaction' by Benny Benassi. The constant close ups on the the body and face as well as the use of both direct and indirect address are used to create a feeling of voyeurism. Within this music video there are a lot of jump cuts on different body parts. Not only does this go with the beat of the music but it is also used in sexual ways, demonstrating legs, bum, breasts and face. As well as this in male performance videos voyeurism is widely used, this is done to give status to the male performers demonstrating that they don't need to make much of an effort in order to get Girls but in fact they come to them. We can clearly see this within the music video 'hot in here' by Nelly despite his effortless traits he still manages to lure all the Girls in. This shows us the artists lifestyle of luxury, with everything they want which is exactly what teenagers aspire to be like, the girls within this video are used to flatter Nelly's ego this is done using closeups presenting girls facial expressions which are always content, and happy exposing to the audience that the artist is 'everything they want' flattering the artists ego.
Feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey wrote the essay visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema' Mulvey identifies three "looks" or perspectives that occur in film which serve to sexually objectify women. The first is the perspective of the male character on screen and how he perceives the female character. The second is the perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen. The third "look" joins the first two looks together: it is the male audience member's perspective of the male character in the film. This third perspective allows the male audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself, through looking, to the male character in the film
However the video 'every time we touch' by Britney Spears can be argued that it goes against Laura Mulvey's theory, instead of being sexually objectified we see Britney in a different light, innocent, sweet and heavenly. In this video she is not sexually objectified yet the performance tells a heart- rending story of Britney committing suicide in the bath. Yet it could be argued that this was done simply to match the story line of the lyrics. In contrast to being upbeat the song has a depressive beat as well as lyrics therefore this the video that would ideally link in with this song.
In conclusion: Goodwin and Mulvey's theories do make sense and therefore can be applied to music videos, yet this is to a certain extent as it is visible that representation of females in a sexual way is extremely common and therefore supports their theories, however it is clear that men can also be used to display the idea of sexual pleasure, take the video 'Like I love you' by Justin Timberlake which presents Justin as being the centre of attention, the one who wants to get the girls yet struggles to, in certain cases it is the male persona that steals the attention of the camera and therefore we can not apply this to Goodwin and Mulvey's theory.
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