'The Gaze' Music Video Analysis

R Kelly Ignition

This is the music video for the song 'Ignition' by rapper R Kelly released in 2003. The video shows R Kelly in a club dancing around acting like a sex god because the song is about having sex with loads of girls. The video has a variety of different shots showing him, girls and club dancers all stitched together to make a 3 minute video. It is not just the male gaze shown in this video, it is also shows the female gaze (which is the same as the male gaze, meaning women assume the male gazer role — when they objectify others by gazing at them like she is the man.) as the girls in the video are staring at R Kelly like he is the most amazing, beautiful guy for miles. This is a comical version of the gaze as it is normal for men to think that they are brilliant, and it is stereotypical that rappers think they can get all of the girls, and all of the girls want the rappers (which is the situation shown in the 'Ignition' video.) However, the male gaze is also shown on the shots of the girls dancing in their own when they are dancing in 'sexy' clothes in provocative ways suggesting that they are attracted to R Kelly/other guys. The mixture of male and female gazes used in the video dismisses Laura Mulvey's theory because the main concept of her theory was that it is only really men that objectify the opposite sex whereas the video shows that women also do it. There aren't really any other 'looks' apart from 'romantic/sexual' and 'seductive.'