Analysis of Cyndi Lauper’s Video Clip "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"

The first music video that I would like to examine is Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”. The track was first written and recorded by Robert Hazard in 1979. This was Lauper's first significant single as a solo artist and was the lead single to her debut studio album “She’s So Unusual”. Hazard’s version was composed from a male perspective. The version is question is a synthesizer-upheld hymn and from a feminist perspective. Lauper revamped the track to accommodate her perspectives on ladies and sexuality, including the lines that are regularly celebrated as an inconspicuous women's activist toss down:

Some boys take a beautiful girl

And hide her away from the rest of the world

I want to be the one to walk in the sun

Oh girls, they want to have fun

“It doesn’t mean that girls just want to f**k”

Lauper said when questioned about the importance from this verse. “It just means that girls want to have the same damn experience that any man could have.” Gillian G. Gaar, writer of She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll (2002), described the single and corresponding video as a "strong feminist statement", an "anthem of female solidarity" and a "playful romp celebrating female camaraderie. I picked this music video since I feel it is much pertinent to the present time. Not simply the verses but rather the set pieces, attire and style and in particular, the message. The video starts with a close up of a lady who acts as the mother of Cyndi in the video. She checks her watch angrily and feigns exacerbation this is an unmistakable portrayal of the tune and video's subject of insubordination and youth, among numerous others, as it depicts young ladies as carefree and unreliable. Furthermore, this scene is unmitigatedly cliché because of certainty that the lady in the kitchen cooking.

A sudden cut on the beat of the melody's opening sees Cyndi move over the camera quickly in a long shot, I feel this shot is illustrative of Cyndi's character and the set of rules she is under. The video bounces to demonstrate that she is in a disoriented race to return home on time. The resulting skipping and pretentious developments she makes on her way home encourages us to comprehend her disobedience and resistance as a character. This is illustrative of Andrew Goodwin’s theory of amplifying the music, as Cyndi is seen doing this a great deal all through the video's aggregate. Similitude, this additionally depicts Jon Gow's theorized genre of “song and dance number”. Her amazing moving could likewise be a cliché portrayal of youngsters.

The mise-en-scene is critical to the video. Cyndi, the focal character, is embellished in a pink dress that is unconventional yet attractive. The melody and its lyrical organization was praised by pundits for it women activist message, thus the ‘male gaze’ theory coined by Laura Mulvey can be utilized to break down Cyndi's image within. She wears grandiose, bright garments, notwithstanding a strong orange hair shade, to oppose sexual objectification and voyeurism as she has her own style, declining to comply with the normal dressing of women that semiotics in the media have proposed as appealing and alluring. The following scene is vital as it is illustrative of the patriarchal society in which the video is set. It demonstrates Cyndi and her dad having a heated discussion, with her dad reprimanding her and pointing his finger towards her. The close up shot of the two makes a disequilibrium and obviously exhibits gender roles. The shot tracks and sees Cyndi wrestle her dad until the point when she is the person who seemingly has less authority as he is seen pressed to the wall face first with a startled expression as she converses with him from behind. This doesn't take after traditions of a normal music video as females are commonly observed as less dominate and weaker than their male partners. This shots demonstrates Strauss' theory of binary oppositions as it presents two distinct characters of two genders, but swaps the cliché that Cyndi who is a younger woman than her opposing male, so her superintendence in the circumstance is much all the more amazing. This shows the recurring thought process of women's liberation all through the piece as well. This extract is significant as it portrays women in a juvenile, powerless sense.

Additionally, the use of popular culture signifies the effect media has on consumers and how representations are formed, as the extract used was created sixty years prior to this video’s release – this suggests that the stereotypical media portrayal of women has been present for several decades. An intertextual reference is indicated later in the video – a clip from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) that delineates the capturing of Esmeralda, a dancing gypsy woman. The insertion compares well with verses now in the video. "Some boys take a beautiful girl, And hide her away from the rest of the world. The accompanying sequence, edited with progression methods made to look like panning, demonstrates every one of the ladies looking upbeat and putting on shades; which are all extraordinary different styles.

My own elucidation of this is this could be allegory that utilizations glasses as iconography for the capacity to 'see the light' and maybe be an enlivening – every one of the ladies, including Cyndi, have now acknowledged they can be who they want to be and can be strong. The distinction in styles brings out a thought that they each grasp their own novel identities. An unmistakable parallel resistance is clear in the scene where every one of the women are dancing in what gives off an impression of being where there is a man reading a newspaper dressed in a brilliant suit. The group of women outnumber the one man which demonstrates recurring the subject of female strengthening that has been available all through; and he joins the young ladies and in addition a few different individuals of the public which additionally depicts a thought of females being powerful.