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When Love Takes Over - Audience Theory Analysis

The theory that applies to this music video is “The Uses and Gratifications” theory. This theory is based around the fact that people watch music videos to satisfy their own needs. It consists of 4 main categories of why people watch media: information, personal identity, integration/social interaction and entertainment. The main category that applies to this music video is: entertainment.

 

The way entertainment satisfies the audience in this music video is through sexual arousal, helping the audience escape from their problems and getting intrinsic or aesthetic enjoyment from what they see.

 

Even though the song is primarily David Guetta’s, Kelly Rowland is seen as the main focal point of the music video as she is the lead singer. The video features many close-ups and extreme close-ups of the singer, showcasing her makeup and the fact she looks beautiful. Being an attractive woman, Kelly Rowland is shown wearing a slim black dress (walking through the town) with cutouts and a swimsuit (on the beach), to make her appear more revealing and sexy to the audience. This is sexual arousal entertainment because some members of the audience may find her sexually attractive which would make them want to keep watching the video.  This links to Laura Mulvey’s ‘Male Gaze Theory’ as the audience is seen to be watching the video from a male perspective looking at an attractive woman. Kelly Rowland is only featuring on David Guetta’s song, but they use her to attract and captivate a male audience to watch the video and therefore listen to the song.

 

Towards the end of the video it shows Kelly Rowland, David Guetta and friends having a party on the beach. This could provide the audiences with a sense of escapism. It could distract from or help to escape from the problems they are currently having by watching people have fun and enjoying their life. This may make the audience feel happy and create a positive motivational effect that they need to sort out their problems so they can start living their life. Alternatively, audiences could perceive this negatively because they are watching people having fun in an amazing location, but they’re stuck at home, still having to deal with all of their problems. It could have a depressing impact on the audience, as it would just make them wish they were at the party on the beach but they know that they can’t be.

 

The location of the video is on Venice Beach and on the Boardwalk in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a famous and glamourous location that most people dream to visit or live in. Even though it is a very nice beach, some parts of the beach that aren’t as beautiful will be cut out of the video. The video will have been edited to only show the best parts of the beach. So, as a location for a music video, it makes the setting/background seem aesthetically pleasing to the audience, being able to see such a fantastic location. 

 

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