Explore how far the representation of gender in Q magazine covers reinforces conventional points of views about men and women in the music industry.

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Explore how far the representation of gender in Q magazine covers reinforces conventional points of views about men and women in the music industry.

Throughout the music industry, the differences between men and women in videos that gross high amounts of money are really quite vast, on one hand you have the male actors who tend to be represented more ‘normally’ whereas on the other hand you have the female actress’, and in most cases it is the female artist herself in the music video that are overall portrayed in a more sexualised manner. In general you also tend to have the males in the music video as being in control of the situation, whatever that situation may be whereas the female characters tend to take a back seat role in whatever happens. Again, you have the supremacy of the man over the women in most cases however this does vary and sometimes you have the complete stereotypical role reversal in music videos but this does not tend to happen a lot. Despite having this divide between the roles and sexes, you still do have the music videos conforming to the general rules and conventions of having a music video, for example the conventions and rules from Propp and Todorov’s.

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Two music videos that we have studied prior to this piece of coursework are: “Run This Town” by Jay-Z, where men are presented as stereotypical ‘gangsters’: wearing balaclavas to keep their identity their own, running around seemingly in a chaotic situation, they all seem to be wearing the stereotypical ‘gangster’ clothing, leather jackets, the balaclava and at some point most of the men in the music video are flailing and wielding flares or weapons of some description, like a scene from a cataclysmic film where you have a group of renegades running the “town”. The second video that I haven’t ...

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