Textual Analysis – ‘Big Pimpin’ Jay-Z
Typically in this video there is the objectification of women, an example is throughout the video there are women wearing as little clothing as possible and dancing in a provocative way, this is an example of Laura Mulvey's idea of 'the male gaze'. Another typical aspect of the rap genre in this video is the way they are flashing their money through the yacht and bottles of champagne and the cars, this is enforcing the idea of patriarchy as it showing only the men to be the rich ones, with a status, whereas the women are seen as their possessions. Lastly, there is a lot of cursing in the video, which again, is a typical part of the rap genre as it's the way they express their successes and it emphasises their attitudes.
At the start of the video Jay-Z says 'big pimpin' and as he says that an image of the yacht he's on is shown, 'big pimpin' is when someone has a lot of flashy and expensive things and uses them to flaunt the amount of money they have to make others envy them, so that's why the yacht comes on the screen when Jay-Z says 'big pimpin'. Another example of the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals is when Jay says 'I'm pimpin in every sense of the word' and then an image of a woman dancing in a bikini is shown on the screen, 'pimpin' can also mean when a man has sexual relations with women.
There are many close-ups of Jay-Z's face at the start, this is because it will help the audience to gain recognition of the artist as this video was quite early in his career, therefore he needed to make sure that his audience would be able to know who he was. Jay-Z isn't often stood with many women around him, there are few occasions when this is the case, this is because he doesn't want to be seen as a rapper that only cares about women and money, he wants to be known more for his music and as a more serious artist that cares what his music sounds like, which is why there are mostly mid close-ups of him. There are only mid shots of the other men in the video to show that they aren't the main artist and they only feature in the video, this is because they don't want to confuse the audience as to who the main artist is.
Yes, this is shown through the way the women's faces are not focused on at all in the video, the video mostly focuses on their bodies, this is because this is what the audience would want, his demographic for his music video would have mainly been 17+ males and this sort of video would have attracted them to watch the music video and the main aim of the video is to sell the record, which, by parading women on little clothing on the screen is helping them to sell the record.
This video would be performance based as there is no narrative to the video or any particular idea or theme to it. It's performance based because it is just Jay-Z rapping towards the camera as though he is giving a performance, this is because he'd want to be recognised with the audience.
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