Geri Halliwell’s It’s Raining Men
We watched in class the music video of Geri Halliwell’s Its Raining Men which simply put illustrates her need to rebrand herself after the split of the spice girls. Not only in the video does she show the physical changes that she has made to her body but also to the style of music and the fact that she to an extent is breaking free of the past disillusions about herself and moving on to bigger and better things in the pop music industry.
The video includes the typical conventions of music videos where the cameras primary focus is on her. It begins with her beginning an audition as what seems to be a well respected dance school, where the judges stereotypically are old and out of date and are only interested or impressed by classical styles of dance. Geri Halliwell enters to begin her peace, by placing her music on a old record player, and starting her audition, however the needle of the record player slips in time with Miss Halliwell making a critical mistake in her piece. She then asks “Can I start again?” Then the audition begins to show the real nature of her audition where she becomes some what of an exhibitionist and plays the camera, the shots move up and down her body in a flirtatious manor bringing to light her lack of fear in showing what she can really do and how she is prepared to do it.
The camera then switches to show another student (male) watching her dance, the camera moves back to her and then back to the door to reveal more male students watching her after a short wait they move in to the room and move her out, whilst the judges are left tapping their feet along to the music, this manner of breaking free of the room, connotes her leaving her past existence and in to her new modern day career.
The music video then sees her having a change of costume to something much more modern and informal. It then switches from her on a stairwell singing directly to the camera and the group of men following her out in to the street.
Throughout the music video their are close ups of the artist which is typical of many music videos as they are the main focus and the video is there to provide a visual aid to the music as well as to add to the selling of the artist (in this case an artist who has left a hugely successful band and is now going solo) the music video is entwined with short and fast edits that tend to be straight cuts and work in time with the music.
The video is one that is positive and uplifting something that many people would love to watch over and over again yet it does conform to many stereotypical views of women and how they should be presented. The video also makes several intertextual references to the movie fame, and was created for the film Bridget Jones Diaries.
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