For my fourth music video analysis I have chosen the single What Do You Mean by Justin Bieber.
The music video, directed by Brad Furman and starring John Leguizamo and Xenia Deli, premiered on the 30th August 2015 following the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. As of July 2016, the video has amassed over 1.12 billion views on YouTube, making it the 22nd most viewed video on the website. This song is a stereotypical pop song, which primarily revolves around a complicated relationship between himself and a his girlfriend. The video is also quite stereotypical for a pop song, as the video features multiple pop genre conventions, as it primarily revolves around the couple and their relationship, uses a wide variety of close-up shots of the male protagonist (Justin Bieber), and he is also featured topless throughout many shots in the video which helps to attract his female demographic audience.
The video starts off with a man waiting at a stop sign in front of a motel in the rain. A dark hooded figure (revealed to be Justin Bieber) walks towards the man. It is revealed that Bieber is in debt to him, and then gives him money and is promised to do one job: to protect a girl, who later plays his love interest. As the song starts, it cuts to a neon-lighted hotel room where the girl that was mentioned earlier is hiding. As Bieber sings the second verse of the song, a group of masked men burst in to the room. They tie them up and kidnap both of them. It then cuts to the pair tied up in an abandoned warehouse and they later use a lighter to burn the rope and escape. When the masked men discover they've escaped they chase after them. They open a door, only to find themselves peering down at the road below. With the men nearing the couple jump out of the window, and land safely on an inflatable mat. They move on to an underground skating party, as Bieber sings the rest of the song. The video ends with Bieber standing alone in the dark, in the skatepark.
Throughout the video, Justin Bieber is featured in a large variety of close-up shots and mid shots, which highlight that he is still the main focus of the music video even though there are other characters involved. This establishes that he is the most important factor, as he is highly famous globally. The mid shots also establish that he is featured wearing ordinary, every day clothing which reflects Dyer's theory of stardom. Dyer states that to be a star you have to maintain two key paradoxes; one of them being that you have to appear both ordinary and extraordinary. Bieber is present as ordinary through his choice of costume in this video as he is wearing a white t-shirt with blue jeans and trainers, which creates the image of a normal teenage boy. However, he is also portrayed as extraordinary through his vocals, and his heroic tendabilities in the music video as he protects the female character from danger. As you can see in the photo above, he helps her to escape the male antagonists in the video, by encouraging her to jump to safety onto the inflatable mat below the motel window, portraying his character as brave.
In the video there is an intertextual reference to an underwear campaign that Justin Bieber had recently released at the time of the music video release, as he is featured wearing Calvin Klein boxers which is highlighted in a mid-shot as he climbs onto the bed. This product placement will encourage his audience to look at the campaign he released, and also encourage them to purchase some of the Calvin Klein products as he endorses them in his videos. As he is featured with his underwear on show, and topless throughout this scene in the video this can relate to Laura Mulvey's theory of the 'male gaze' and Freud's theory of voyeurism in music videos. Laura Mulvey argues that females are often featured in revealing costumes and are objectified to attract male attention in order to sell their products, whilst Freud argues that sexual themes and ideas are often used in music videos in order to sell their products as certain individuals gain enjoyment from watching other people interact intimately. Bieber uses both of these ideas within his video as both the female character and him are featured half naked, and they are featured also shown to be kissing. The lyrics work well with the footage at towards the beginning of the video when he first meets the female character, as he sings 'When you don't want me to move, but you tell me to go, what do you mean?', and in the footage she is shown to be kissing him but then suddenly pushes him away with no warning before beginning to kiss him again.
The music and beat of the song also go well with the visuals of the music video, as the tempo of the track matches the speed of the narrative and the editing.
What Do You Mean music video:
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