Music Video Analysis of 'Love The Way You Lie' Eminem

In the extract in which we watched (music video ‘Love The Way You Lie’ by Eminem) gender is portrayed in a variety of ways. The initial view is male dominance throughout the video, and the power of Eminem’s voice throughout over shadows Rihanna’s soft tone to emphasise this view. However when we look closer towards the relation of lyrics to the video and look closer at the actual actions within the video, these views can be quickly changed.

Initially the video portrays the idea of domestic violence, implemented mainly by Eminem , represented mainly through the lines ‘I guess I don’t know my own strength’, this female vulnerability is also displayed through the way Rihanna sings in front of burning flames singing ‘stand there and watch me burn’ however further on in the video Megan Fox throws the first punch-- while Dominic is still asleep. And the second, and pretty much all of the punches. This therefore goes against this whole idea of the male dominance. However we do see the male character show violence through punching the wall, a mirror and having a fight in a bar savagely beating his male opponent however shows no physical violence towards the female, except on one occasion 3:45 where the female is hit.

We then see scenes in which the male anger is shown; he tears the house apart and hits the female which is something which can be taken very seriously which would mean the audience may well judge him for doing so, but they would also get the impression that he is not in a correct frame of mind and he is just taking his anger out. Around these scenes something important happens. We go back to the scene at the start where the female is holding the flame again. Except now we see her close her hands to put the flame out which signifies that she has had enough and isn’t going to take this anymore; she is going to fight back (the rise of feminism). To end the song we see a series of shots where lots of things are on fire. Dominic is on fire which could either be to show that he is so angry he is now alight, or that now Meghan has finally stood up for herself he is burning away. Meghan is also engulfed by flames at one stage while she is cuddled up on her bad looking sad which could show that all the burning up that was going on inside is now coming out as she releases it from herself. Just before the end we see the singers turn to face the burning house which is showing that audience the destruction that this relationship has caused. However, to finally end, we see Meghan waking up in the same bed we saw her in at the start, so maybe all of what we saw was a dream, or a hope? But we know that their relationship status was very much real.

It is around this area where the views of the video by the audience changes and the meanings become far more deep. For example after a immediate shot back to Rihanna’s face we see the female character in a dark room with a flame being held. This supposedly could be a representation of how she is feeling emotionally; due to red being a very good representation of anger. This then happens again; a glance back at Rihanna as she sings and then back to the female however slightly closer to her. Within this particular stage in the song we see the change in tempo and feels very soft and slow, therefore the rate of cuts is slow and this mirrors how the female character feels, very sad/emotional. In addition to this ,a point that should be raised is Rihanna hair colour . Red is a hot colour (relation there to the fire in the background of most of her scenes). It's a strong colour that brings up a range of conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence.

This could therefore mean that the female is in a relationship which is passionate yet with that passion, come violence. For example when Rihanna’s chorus is introduced, we see the couple passionately kissing the wall the man had just punched. This could be to show that even though they fight like, they do still feel passion for each other, which can also be displayed through Rihanna’s fierce yet sexual facial expressions.

I therefore conclude that within this music video male dominance is seemingly represented and the audience are forced to see a male dominance and violence from the male characters however when they look closer we see how it is in fact controversial music video although the women shows a lot of violence , maybe not as powerful as the man she shows importance within the video and some mental strength which is then lost through the choruses where she loses all dominance when she shows her mental state.