Textual Analysis

Analysing the features in music videos using Goodwin's principals. 


Artist: Rihanna 
Name of track: Te Amo
Director: Anthony Mandler


What is the relationship between lyrics and visuals?

There seems to be a relationship between lyrics and visuals throughout the video, even though some of the timings are slightly off. One example that showed a good relationship was 2 minutes 22 seconds into the video where she sang "let me go" and the way she was standing up against the wall wriggling illustrated that she may have been tied up in some way. This was only a very short shot duration as most of the video has very high speed shots so it lasted a second but it still had enough time to show the link between the visuals and lyrics. 


What is the relationship between music and visuals?
The director has executed this relationship very well, including lots of very fast shots in the first 3 minutes of the track. He has put a shot on every beat in the chorus, which is very fast, too fast to even count, but he has done this very successfully. In the last full minute of the song, I managed to roughly count 51 different shots. 


Are there any close-ups of the artist and star image motifs? 

There are quite a few close-up shots of Rihanna, and just as many of the supermodel who is also included in the video. I think there are so many close-up shots because she is the star image motif, and that could be the reason why I didn't find one throughout the video. But here is a good example of a close-up shot that is 1 minute and 26 seconds into the video.


Is there any reference to the notion of looking? 
There seems to be constant shots of the eyes in particular. This could be the notion of looking, from Goodwin's theory. 


Are there any intertextual references? 
As far as I could see I couldn't make out any intertextual references throughout the duration of the video. For others who watch it they may think differently as they could have seen more types of media that could relate to it. 


Is it based mainly on performance, narrative or a concept? 

This video is mainly more narrative than anything else, as it tells a story. The acting of Rihanna and the model in the video gives the audience the sex appeal that they seem to ask for.