Music Video Analysis 2 - Dizzee Rascal - Dance Wiv Me

‘Dance wiv me’ is a single off of Dizzee Rascals fourth album, Tongue ‘n’ Cheek, featuring vocals from singer and DJ Calvin Harris and R&B rapper Chrome and this is the song I have decided to use for my second music video analysis. The song mixes the styles of all three of the artists and the video to the song is mainly performance based with a slight narrative side, about going to a club and getting girls to leave and come home with them. The main themes of the video are sex, dance and girls with the majority of the camera shots including a girl in them, dressed in little clothing and posing suggestively.

The way these girls are portrayed is featured in Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’. The theory goes on to explain how a lot of TV, film and music shows women as objects and the audience is put into the point of view of a heterosexual male. A scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body and this male gaze, according to Mulvey, takes precedence over the female gaze. This ‘Male Gaze’ is featured heavily throughout the video to ‘Dance Wiv Me’.

In the screen shot above, the camera is slowly moving up along a dancing girls body, as if from the viewpoint of Dizzee Rascal, sitting down on a sofa in front of her. The girl is in very little clothing and is seen as an object by the males just to look at and be viewed in a sexual way. This gaze on the females throughout the video is not given back to the males from a females point of view, hence supporting the view of Mulvey’s that the male gaze takes precedence over the female gaze.

The genre characteristics of this music feature within the video and the director, Mark Anthony, hasn’t chosen to deviate away from most of these characteristics. Goodwin’s 6 point theory outlines this in the first point and how a music video either includes the characteristics or deviates away from them. These characteristics include that of showing the singer performing as much as possible and the video related around them, as well as having friends or their ‘gang’ around them with the possible feature of girls with them or just passers by. Seeing the performer/s as much as possible, example below, through the video relates to the fourth point of Goodwin’s analysis, in that the record label demands close ups of the artist and for them to be presented in a certain way that is then spread across the majority of their work building up their motif.

 Goodwin’s second point in his music video analysis theory, that there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals, also applies to Dizzee Rascals video. Throughout the song Dizzee sings lyrics such as, ‘I been keeping my eye on your movement’,’You got a body to die for’,’Look at those thighs’ and ‘You look good to me’. As these lyrics are sung, images of girls are flashed up onto the screen using quick cuts, to express what is being said in the lyrics and to add more emphasise onto the idea of the male gaze, also relating to point 5 of Goodwin’s theory around the voyeuristic treatment of the female body, as all of these lyrics insinuate something about the female body and how it is looked at by a male.

The performance side of this music video is heavily shown throughout, with each of the artist being shown through the majority of their parts to the song, especially the main star, Dizzee Rascal. The camera moves with them, following them around the location and alternating between close-ups, mid-shots and long-shots of each of them.
The narrative side is less obvious and is only seen once the lyrics are known and you can begin to relate them to what is happening throughout the video. It is mainly the lyrics that take on the narrative side of the video as the narrative could be understood without the video being there, the lyrics manage to tell the story and the video just supports what they’re trying to get across.