Representation of Gender in 'The Man' and 'Riptide'

Representation of Gender in 'The Man' and 'Riptide'

Taylor Swift - ‘The Man’

Taylor Swift is a singer who is categorised in the 'pop' genre. In 2019, she released her album 'Lover' with one of her singles being 'The Man' which gathered a lot of attention due to its lyrics as well as the music video that went along with it. The music video itself was the most controversial of the single. Taylor Swift is typically known to have music videos that have deep meanings to them and 'The Man' follows the same principle. She directed the entire music video herself and manages to convey her thoughts about men who have toxic masculinity towards women and those who present themselves as more powerful than women, and through the music video she indirectly encourages women to fight back for their equality and stand up to men who are seen as selfish and cocky. 

The first shot of the music video is a wide shot of a man looking the opposite way of the camera through a glass window pane in an office looking down on the city streets. This first shot instantly shows that the man is presented as 'powerful' since he's looking down onto the people walking on the streets below. He also presents a complacent figure from this first scene until the end of the video. Onto the next scene of the video, it shows him in a subway train manspreading whilst sitting next to people next to him to assert his dominance and power over the women sitting next to him who seem annoyed at his manspreading as well as him smoking a cigar and not caring about others. He then gets off at a subway station and urinates on a wall with a sign on that wall showing a 'no scooter' symbol. This could refer to Swift's manager Scooter Braun who would not let her keep her past discography or keep her masters and she seems to shade him and perhaps this links in with him showing his 'power' over Taylor and trying to control her. This dispute has been going on for years and in November of 2020, Braun sold her records for a business deal. There is then a scene where it shows the man with multiple women in bikinis who are dancing around him then followed by a scene of him running down a hallway high-fiving multiple hands after he gets out of bed with a woman to show he could be a 'player' and enforces his 'alpha' and 'dominant' self when it comes to women. It then goes on to a park scene where the man is with his daughter and all the women in the park praise him for taking his daughter out, which is something that is stereotyped where it's the mother who should be doing that. The last scene of the video shows the man walking up to the 'director' who is Taylor where she rhetorically asks him to "try to be more sexier" where he replies with "no problem" and walks away seemingly unoffended.

Vance Joy - ‘Riptide’

'Riptide' is the debut single released in 2013 by singer Vance Joy. His music is typically categorised as indie-folk with some pop undertones to it. From the beginning shot to the last shot of the video, the video has a low budget as there are no special effects and there are only image or short clip shots. During the course of the video, a woman is seen singing with nothing in this shot but her and the microphone and she is briefly shown a couple times with each time the scene reappears, the woman has her makeup ruined and smudged. In these scenes the lyrics of the song appear at the bottom and whilst it appears at first that she is singing the words, the woman actually sings the words wrong which gives the impression that she is forced to sing this song. The smudges of her makeup make it seem like she has been slapped across her face for that to happen. These scenes are contrasted with the rest of the scenes such as the beach scenes, which represent a colourful setting and surroundings compared to the dark scenes of the woman. The same woman is seen being dragged off screen into darkness which reinforces these dark scenes further. This shows that women are seen as weak and defenceless. This is similar to the subway scene in 'The Man' music video where the man asserts power and control by manspreading and not caring about the people beside him. Throughout the whole video women are objectified and this reinforces the idea of a patriarchal society by how the women are mistreated and domesticated whilst the 'man' has authority. This is similar to a scene in 'The Man' where the man is on a yacht with many women and they are all dressed in bikinis to stereotypically reinforce how women should dress to please a man and further objectifies them. The video begins with the women conforming to the social norms of beauty and glamour which is associated with women in the mainstream media. As the video goes on, her makeup becomes smudged as her facial expressions become more worrying and there is an edge-fade effect where there is a fade of darkness around the woman's face. This could portray that women are not cared about and are left in darkness. This video, unlike ‘The Man’, is not straight forward with a narrative and instead it leaves the audience puzzled and confused of whether this video objectifies women or raises awareness and rejects social norms surrounding women.