Tom Cornick
How does this music video appeal to its target audience?
‘Roar’ by Katy Perry
The music video ‘Roar’ attracts a wide range of
people of all ages, male and female. This mass
audience is mainly attracted due to the popularity
of the artist, but also the style of her music videos.
Roar, is a good example of this due to the frequent
use of animation and other visual effects.
However the main audience for this music videos
would most likely be teenagers due to the upbeat
style of the song and partly because of how the
artist is shown in the way that she dresses. This
particular aspect would mainly draw the male side
of the audience for obvious reasons. As there is a
storyline behind the music video, and the artist is acting we can class it as a narrative and performance genre.
The musical genre however is obviously pop. The general idea of pop music is to appeal to a more general
audience rather that a particular sub-culture or ideology. The main characteristics of pop music are its catchy
tunes and simple, direct lyrics. Pop music is designed to appeal to large groups of listeners and to be
commercially successful, another thing is that pop music doesn’t require any knowledge of music in order to
be able to appreciate it. The music video ‘Roar’ applies all of these aspects.
Andrew Goodwin came up with a theory for music videos and consisted of eight key points. One of these
points was that there is usually a link between the lyrics and the music video itself, which in our case, applies
to ‘Roar’. Another point that applies is the whether the music video is one of three music video genres,
performance, narrative or concept. The music video ‘Roar’ has two of these genres, as I have mentioned
earlier.
As well as Goodwin’s theory, some of
Barthes’ theory can be applied to the
subject music video. One of the most
obvious points is intertextuality as it
looks as if it is based on a comic book
from the 1950s, the style of the music
video, looks a little artificial and
idealised. This is done to keep with the
theme of animation. At the beginning
there is a strong cultural code, the man
taking a selfie, this is done to combine to
modern world with the artificial and
idealised world. Another point that is
clear to the audience is the antistereotypical aspect of the characters.
Stereotypically, the male character is normally shown to be the hero and his main role is protect anyone around
him, however in the music video ‘Roar’, the female character, Katy Perry, is shown to be braver and more
dominant than the male character, the male character gets eaten by the tiger. As the music video goes on, we
learn that Katy Perry becomes a sort of ‘Jane of the jungle’ type figure and learns to live alongside the wild
animals, in a Mother Nature sort of way. Towards the end, there is shot of here sitting on what we can assume
is a throne with all the animals sat around her, this is classic example of female dominance.
As well as the codes above there are also technical codes within the music video. The first technical aspect is
the use of Junglescope and animation. The main reason for this is to get the music video to appeal to a wide
audience of all ages, as everybody likes animation especially young kids, this video enables her to introduce
her music and style to new, younger audiences.
Another technical aspect is the carefully selected camera work. The three stills that are shown above all, in
some way represent dominance, the first one shows her looking down at us, in the second one, she’s using her
body as well as eye contact to portray her dominance in the jungle world. However the last one is the strongest
example, as when she roars at the tiger, the tiger lays down in front of her. All the aspects that I have written
about all help to enhance the lyrics of the song as well as gaining her own popularity and introducing younger
audiences to her music.