Beyoncé – ‘Pretty Hurts’ AnalysisAsia Thomas Jennings

Overview

The song is mainly focused on the pressures that young women face in order to feel beautiful under the judging eye’s of society. The song encourages young women to love themselves and accept their appearance and who they are as a person. Beyoncé also tries to instil the idea that it only matter what one thinks of one’s self, not anybody else’s opinion. Because there is such a powerful message being presented through the audio, the visuals had to follow suit. Beyoncé chose to use a mixture of performance and narrative in her music video in order to showcase her own talents but also to show the audience how the media and societies pressures have real effects on people.

Opening shot

The opening shot for a music video is usually very important as it sets the scene for the rest of the video and audiences already have certain expectations of what they will see throughout the video. In ‘Pretty Hurts’ Beyoncé used a close up of her face looking in the mirror which lasts approximately 0:03 seconds. This is fairly long as in most newer music videos, the editing style is usually quite fast. The close up could have been done to establish a level of intimacy between the audience and the artist and possibly show some vulnerability in the way that we already see the constant self reflection due to the scrutiny of the media industry.

Mise En Scene - SettingThroughout the video there is an extreme lack of establishing/ location shots due to how many close ups of either the artist or the other characters in the narrative. However, of what we can see, many of the locations either tend to be at a home-like environment or a dressing room for a beauty pageant which is theme of the narrative. The home location could have been done again to try and identify with the audience and show similarities between the struggles the artist faces and the audience’s themselves.

Mise En Scene – Costume

As you can see, during the course of the music video, the artist changes costume to the point of excess. This may have been done deliberately done to illustrate just how important image becomes when one lets society dictate how the one feels about one’s self.

Mise En Scene – Body Language

It is interesting to note that when the artist is placed in the home-like environment, the posture and body language is always lowered and slouched, whereas as I the beauty pageant environment the posture is good and the artist is nearly always smiling not stage. This could have been done to show the contrast between how the artist may feel behind closed doors and what she may show the media.

Mise En Scene - Positioning

Often when alone in the home-like environment, the artist takes up most of the shot and is certainly the focal point of what is important in the shot. However, it is interesting to note that when the artist is in the pageant environment, she tends to blend in more with the other characters as there are so many on the stage. This contrast could have been shown to illustrate how unique everyone is and when alone she is able to acknowledge this, however when everyone groups together, people can tend to forget the fact that they are unique and may blend into the background.