This music video by Nicki Minaj explores themes of representation, gender, and narrative through its storyline and imagery. It depicts a rivalry between Nicki and another female student over their shared love interest, a samurai teacher. Nicki dresses and acts as a geisha, a negative stereotype implying prostitution. A sword fight ensues, with Nicki being stabbed and dying in her teacher's arms. The video uses these Japanese cultural references and a narrative illustrating the song's lyrics to represent themes of love, jealousy, and gender roles.
![What is music video for?<br />,[object Object],Nearly every music video that is realised today has a performance scene; it’s usually a scene that is performed directly to the audience by the lead singer(s). In this particular ‘Nicki Minaj’ is in shot where she is performing to the camera and keeping direct eye contact. <br />Issues of representation: Gender & Narrative<br />,[object Object], <br />24765064770<br />This music video has a narrative that explores and acts out the lyrics, ‘Imma Die Hard like Bruce Willis’ Nicki is speaking metaphorically and revering to Bruce Willis the actor and his film ‘Die Hard’. However the narrative of the video shows that she is fighting for her love who is a ‘Samurai’ and her teacher. The other woman in the shot with her is also a student like herself, but is jealous of the relationship between Nick and the teacher. In music video we explore jealously which is usually associated with females and is a negative representation. The stereotypical reason for females to be jealous is usually due to rivalry over males, similar to this music video. ‘When I was a Geisha he was a Samurai’, Nicki in the lyric is revering to herself as a Geisha which is a negative representation of gender because Geishas were seen as prostitutes by the Japanese Samurais. <br />Throughout the video we learn that both Nick and the girl are students in a ‘Samurai’ school and both are attracted to the teacher but the teacher is fonder to Nicki (the artist), this is where the rivalry begins. They then have a sword fight in this case nicki is stabbed which makes us feel more sympathetic towards her. This challenges codes and conventions of binary opposites, evil triumphs over good and Nicki is left to die when her ‘love’ the teacher finds her and stays till she dies. ‘Your Love’ is the name of this music video and the conventions of it follows the Andrew Godwin’s ‘illustrate’ which is a term used to describe when a music video is based on the lyrics and shows some of the verbal lyrics as images.<br />Audience & Media Language <br />3752850334010<br />1314450163195190500144145<br />3238500230505-66675163830<br />The way nicki is dressed would be associated with how a female known as a ‘Geisha’ would have dressed. Geishas were also known as prostitutes for the ‘Samurai’s’ pleasure. <br />The use of swords is an association and a representation of a ‘Samurai’ which is a culture of the Japanese. The definition of the word is ‘the way of the sword’. <br />144780073660<br />The use of mese-en-scene such as the costume and props used Nicki Minaj is trying to recreate the Japanese theme of ‘love’ and in using this to appeal to her target audience. <br />](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/nickmanij-110214091726-phpapp01/85/nicki-manij-1-320.jpg)
