Representation Analysis

In this blog post, I will be analyzing two music videos from Justin Bieber. I chose to do two of his music videos because I think his videos show great diversity in terms of race, age and gender, and because I think he does aesthetic music videos that are very eye catching and use a variety of different colours and very striking mise-en-scene.

The first Justin Bieber music video I will be anaylzing will be "Beauty And A Beat", a collaboration with rapper Nicki Minaj, and was released in 2012. I chose to analyze this MV because I think it has a very different approach to video directing, and I think it features a very fun setting (a water park), as well as a colorful mise-en-scene. In terms of the diversity in the video, we see many people from different ethnic backgrounds; from white people, black people and racially ambiguous people. Additionally, Nicki Minaj (the rapper featured on the song) is a black woman herself, further adding on to the ethnic diversity of the song and video. The video predominantly features younger men and women, which makes sense considering the song genre is electropop (a relatively newer genre of music), who are seen dancing alongside Bieber and are featured heavily in the background. The video's setting (a water park) further adds on to the target demographic for the video, due to the fact that the people who attend water parks are mostly the younger generation. The colors featured in the video (blue, green, pink, etc) further amplify the vibrant nature of the song, since it is a electropop song that is very upbeat and is made to dance to. Like I have mentioned before, I like how the video takes a different approach to directing, due to the fact Bieber directed the video himself, using a GoPro, which is held in his hand, creating a POV shot. This is unique, considering that the majority of music videos (regardless of genre) are all directed by a director. With Bieber directing his own video, he is making it seem like he is directly talking to his audience, building a connection between him and his fanbase. In turn, the audience feels like they can identify with him (narrative theory).

The second Justin Bieber music video I will be analyzing is "Holy", a collaboration with rapper Chance the Rapper, and was released in 2020. I chose to analyze this music video because I think it features a very beautiful narrative, as well as having a very eye-catching mise-en-scene. The narrative follows portrays the relationship between a construction worker (Bieber) who gets laid off, alongside his partner, a nurse (portrayed by Ryan Destiny). The couple eventually meet a helpful soldier (played by Wilmer Valderrama), who offers them to eat with his family. The ethnic diversity shown in this video is shown through Bieber's fellow construction workers (who are all either black or white), the nurse (Destiny, who is a black woman; the representation of an interracial relationship), the diversity in the hospital (black, white and one Asian woman), and the soldier (Valderrama, a Latino man). Additionally, Chance the Rapper is a black man himself, further adding on to the diversity of the video. There is also age diversity shown in the MV, as we see the nurse caring for an elderly man, who is presumed to be sick as he is bedridden; we also see older people at the hospital, showing them dancing alongside the nurse (the positive portrayal of older people). The color palette shown in the video is a mixture of both warm and cool colors (blue, yellow, beige, green etc.) show both the negative (getting laid of a job) and positives (the couple and soldiers family at the end) in the video. The cool colors showed in the clip further add on the moody and mellow atmosphere of the song, which is not upbeat and is quite slower compared to the song I analysed above. The video has a traditional narrative direction, with a director (Colin Tilley) directing to the video. It is directed in chronological order, with Bieber working his job, to him and his partner meeting the soldiers family.