Anaconda Video Analysis

Nicki Minaj - Anaconda Music Video

Textual Analysis

Background Information - I decided to discuss this music video because of how massively popular and extraordinarily controversial it is. Raking up more than 260,000,000 views in just 4 weeks.

Nicki Minaj has claimed that the barely-clothed booty-worship in her hypersexualised music video Anaconda shows "just what girls do".

In the GQ interview Minaj points out: "I'm chopping up the banana ... that was important for us to show in the kitchen scene, because it's always about the female taking back the power, and if you want to be flirty and funny that's fine, but always keeping the power and the control in everything."

An interviewer wrote that Minaj shrugged in response to repeated questions about the meaning of her video, which features a lot of scantily-clad voluptuous dancers in very close proximity to Minaj: "I don't know what there is to really talk about."

"I'm being serious. I just see the video as being a normal video."

Lighting and Colour - Many different vibrant and bright colours are used throughout the video. Especially hot pinks as that is Nicki Minaj’s signature colour. I think they are used to give the video a quirky feel. The colour temperature in the music video, for the most part is warm, to make it look like it’s hot in the jungle scenes. Which is why the girls are sweaty.

Camera Shots - The music video incorporates quite a few different camera shots. For example, a panning shot was used in the beginning, to reveal Nicki Minaj and her backup dancers all posed and ready to twerk their hearts out. Also, a closeup-panning shot is used across Nicki Minaj’s body. Extreme closeups are also used very often, mainly to highlight product placements throughout the video. Crane shots are used often as well during to twerking scenes, starting from the bottom and going up and over, looking down on the dancers. A tracking shot is used in the gym scene when Nicki is acting as a gym instructor, and pushes the girls legs down to the ground. Close-ups are used in the kitchen scene to show Nicki Minaj from the bust up, as she eats a banana and her facial expressions. Finally, a mid-shot is used at the very end when she gives Drake a lap-dance, to show the entirety of their bodies in that scene.

Editing - Is very simple and very good. Mainly lots of short jump cuts, showing scenes of her twerking or doing something shockingly explicit. Slow and fast motion is used during twerking scenes to speed up or slow down the giggling of her buttocks to sync it with the beat of the music. That same technique is used for the product-placement scenes.

Representation/Mise En Scene - Throughout the music video we see nicki minaj portrayed to be a crazy, sexy, extremely explicit 'Man-Eater'. This is seen through her various costumes, which are very revealing, and accentuate her curves. Also in one scene we see her going crazy and spraying whipped cream all over her bosoms. All lending to her 'crazy, sexy' persona. In the gym scene. We see her acting as a very ditzy, gym instructor. Lyrically and from the video, she is being represented as having ‘a perfect body’, the body everyone wants and should have, and what every guy wants as well. But that simply isn’t true. She is so fake and her body is so unnatural, and unobtainable by any female without spending a lifes savings on plastic surgery.

Secondary Research

www.Time.com

“At first I’m being sexual with the banana, and then it’s like, ‘Ha-ha, no.’ ” I ask if she’s referring to how the Drake scene immediately follows the kitchen scene. “Yeah, that was important for us to show in the kitchen scene, because it’s always about the female taking back the power, and if you want to be flirty and funny that’s fine, but always keeping the power and the control in everything.” - Nicki Minaj

You heard it here first. “Anaconda” is about a snake, and also about a woman’s ex-boyfriends, and the video is just one big slumber party. You can release a record cover into the atmosphere that makes all who see it so shocked and discomforted that their only way to metabolize it is to turn it into the world’s fastest-spreading meme, to the point where her squatting form ends up on a polo shirt, right where the little crocodile usually goes. You can do all this, and still you can look someone in the eye and say that it’s not cynical in the least, that it’s not a comment on gender or sex or the culture or anything. Double shrug. - Time Interviewer

Survey

Male     /     Female

Age -

Have you seen the music video for Anaconda by Nicki Minaj?     Yes     /    No

If you have, then how many times have you seen it?

1. Couldn’t make it all the way through
2. Once
3. 5 times or less
4. More than 5 times
5. More than 20
6. CAN’T STOP WATCHING IT OMD

Did you like it?      Yes     /     No

Why?

Do you think Nicki Minaj is a good role model?     Yes     /    No

Nicki Minaj said that she cut up the banana after sucking it in the music video because “it's always about the female taking back the power, and if you want to be flirty and funny that's fine, but always keeping the power and the control in everything."

Do you agree with her thinking?     Yes     /     No

She claims to be a feminist, do you think she really is?    Yes     /     No

Why do you think that?

How would you describe Nicki Minaj in one word after seeing that music video?

If you were asked to twerk in a music video, would you?     Yes     /     No

Findings

Out of the 15 students interviewed, 11 were girls, and 4 were boys. All of them had seen it at least once. A great majority of them also like it because it was funny and quirky. Regardless of this though, when ask if she was a good role model the answer was definitive. NO.

Due to her views that women should be above men, nobody interviewed thinks that’s she’s a feminist, though she self-proclaims to be so.

In one word, persons described her as ‘Stupid, Crazy, Whore and QUEEN’. What I find the most interesting about this study though, is that if any of the persons interviewed (bar one) were asked to twerk in a music video they would. ‘For the money of course’._________________________________________________________________________________

Click on this link to see the presentation I did on Anaconda the music video

Anaconda Analysis Presentation