Goodwin identified 8 principles that distinguish music videos, including the link between music/lyrics and visuals, genre conventions, demands of record labels, and intertextual references. Laura Melvey coined the term "male gaze theory" in 1975 to describe how the camera often lingers on the female body and presents events through a male perspective, sometimes reducing women to objects. Johnathon Schroder stated in 1998 that the male gaze implies a power dynamic where the gazer sees the object of the gaze as inferior.

1. Media Theories in General

2. Goodwin’s Theory
Goodwin identified 8 main principles which can distinguish a
music video:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
The link between music and the visuals
Link between lyrics and the visuals
Genre conventions
Demand of the record label (representations of the artists) including close ups
Type of music video - concept, narrative or performance
based
Notion of looking
Voyeurism (direct gaze - usually with sexual connotations)
Intertextual references

3. Laura Melvey – The Male Gaze
Theory
Laura Melvey is a British film feminist, she coined the
term 'male gaze theory' in 1975
Features of the male gaze theory:
 The camera lingers on the curves of the female body and the events which occur to women are presented
with the male's reaction to events
 Some music videos give women the status of objects
 Some theorists have noted the sexualising of the
female body, even when the female's body is not
related to the product being advertised.

4. Johnathon Schroder (1998)
‘To gaze implies more than to look
at – it signifies a psychological
relationship of power, in which the
gazer is superior to the object of
the gaze’