Voyeurism comes from Freud and is used to explain the gendered pleasure and can be used to sell the artist's music through sex appeal. For a male, it refers to the idea of looking in order to gain sexual pleasure. There is a powerful controlling gaze at the objectified female of display. This idea can be closely linked to the idea of scopophilia, which is the desire for looking. Most music videos we watch will create this desire to look. A good example of this can be from Robert Palmer, addicted to love.
Goodwin argues that the female on display will often be objectified through a combination of camera work and editing of fragmented shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star. An example of this is Beyoncé – Single Ladies where she is showing herself to make a statement by the way she dances and shows off her body. The low angles point upwards enticing men to look.
Females are also used in male artist’s videos with the use of dancers flattering the male star. However the male body is also on display such as in Lady Gaga’s video Born This Way we see the male body on display and women in control. She also dresses in a way that encourages men to look and here is no problem for her to do that as women are used to being looked at in that kind of way. In Nicki Minaj’s video Superbass, there are topless men as well as girls showing off their body which sells her as a star image. She uses men in her video to entice female viewers as well as women to draw in male viewers which will increase her views and promote her as an artist.
Laura Mulvey says that the camera is the male’s view, so all the camera sees is what it wants the men to see. Women get used to the male controlling gaze and women learn to be looked at. This is another way for an artist to sell her image to the audience.
A good example of voyeurism is in Miley Cyrus's Can't Be Tamed, for instance, when the video shows crowds looking in on her as a caged animal, parodying the public's voyeurism of her as a famous person, or to enhance the message of the lyrics. This shows both Goodwin and Mulvey’s theories of voyeurism.
The idea of voyeurism is also evident in music video through ‘screens within screens’ with characters shown watching performers on television or on webcams etc. as on a video camera or CCTV.
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