Structural Analysis
Music video analysis: Katy Perry – Part of Me
“Part of Me” is a song by American singer Katy Perry, released as the lead single from “Teenage Dream: The Complete Collection.” Written by Katy Perry and Bonnie McKee, the song got an accompanying music video that was filmed during the course of three days, at the United States Marine Corps’ Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California. (archive-John-Mitchell 2017)
The video depicts the singer enlisting the Marines after she broke up with her boyfriend. The title truck of the music video begins as the main character, which portrayed by the singer, as she drives to a gas station after ending her relationship with her boyfriend. She buys a can of tea and right after paying for her item, she sees a motto-sticker on a notice board which reads “All women are created equal, then some become Marines.” (Katy Perry – Part Of Me (Official) 2012) Perry then gathers her possessions from her truck and rushes to the restroom in order to begin her dramatic change of identity: she cuts her hair short, flattens her breasts, removes all her accessories, and changes into jeans and a hoodie.
Following her transformation, the character joins the United States Marine Corps, after passing the recruit training. Perry reminisces over her memories with her ex-boyfriend but remains vindictive and malevolent towards him. In this regard, she burns a love note from him and vents her frustration through the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. Towards the end, the video depicts Katy Perry’s training and shows her dancing beneath a large garrison flag. She ultimately transforms into a trained warrior, a marine that wouldn’t let anything hurt her anymore, with serious body armor and camouflage face paint. (archive-John-Mitchell 2017)
Firstly, in my opinion, this triumph-of-the-spirit drama story would be pretty similar to the story of Kayla Williams in “Love My Rifle More than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army,” another story of a search for identity and a drastic transformation following military training. Giving readers a woman’s story of empowerment and self-discovery, Williams shares a powerful series of her experiences in Iraq, from caring for a wounded civilian to aiming a gun at a child. She offers us a raw, unadulterated look at the war and at the changes that appear to a woman’s heart and mind after the recruit training in the Army.
Narrative structure is evident in many aspects of the media, whether be it film, television or news stories. When writing about narrative one really needs to take a look at narrative theorists like Propp. In the case of Katy Perry’s “Part of Me,” she is both the protagonist and the narrator. The music video portrays a subjective character, as the whole action is perceived only through her point of view, and what she is feeling. According to Propp’s character typologies, we can identify the following characters in Katy Perry’s drama story: the villain, portrayed by the unfaithful boyfriend, as he is the one causing the breakup, therefore creating the narrative disruption, as that is what pushed his ex-girlfriend to join the marines. The hero would be Perry, as she is restoring the narrative equilibrium and creating a new independent life. The princess would be herself also, as she is saving herself from an unhealthy relationship. Of course, there are also the military teams and the officers, who are the less important characters and cannot be included in one of Propp’s typologies.
This music video shows a very heavy use of narrative, this being that a broken relationship that has always made Perry not do what she wanted to do in life and hold her back is finally over, because she learns to grow stronger and takes the decision of committing her life to the marines. (Amponsah, Level, and Profile 2017) Therefore, the narrative of the video is based on the transformation that the hero makes after finding out that her partner has been cheating on her. Propp’s narrative functions can be applied to Katy Perry’s music video as it starts off with an initial situation which contains diegetic sound as we hear a radio station in which people are calling and talking about their relationship issues: Presenter – “So why you still with them then?”; distressed woman – “He says that one day he wants to have kids with me, and that he hates traveling and being away from me”; presenter – “So what’s the problem?”; distressed woman – “How come it takes him two hours to call back, I just think that’s shady.” (Katy Perry – Part Of Me (Official) 2012) As this is happening, we see Katy, who plays the hero, looking at a locket and at her boyfriend kissing an attractive blonde woman in an office. Here, the locket can be a symbol for the relationship what will soon end on the boyfriend’s desk, as Katy throws it there in order to leave all her past with that man behind. What is very interesting is that just by this 30 second extract of the music video, the viewer can already understand what is happening in the world of the protagonist and that the main female character is on the verge of being disrespected in her love relationship. The producers used many high angle shots for this beginning, which connote that Katy isn’t important and that she is weaker than the male characters in this music video. This conforms to the idea that women should be represented as housewives or highly sexualised. However, low angle shots are denoted later on in the music video as she joins the army, connoting that she is now equal with her male counterparts in the Marine.
The next narrative function that we can identify in Perry’s story is the trickery; that would be the fact that the boyfriend is caught kissing another girl, therefore forcing Katy to end her relationship. The struggle is another function that can be identified in the music video, as we are witnesses to the fight between Perry and her boyfriend, which leads to the end of their relationship. Mediation would be when she sees an advertisement in a shop about joining the army, which says “All women are created equal, then some become marines,” reinforcing the ideological values that some turn to straighten themselves, in order to take control of their lives, or that women are usually mistreated in society. This then leads to the departure of the hero as she decides to join the army. The last narrative function that can be identified in Perry’s video is the victory, as the hero succeeds in creating a brand new life without her boyfriend. This subverts the ideological values mentioned above as she is seen at the end as being a strong empowering woman, who doesn’t need a man by her side. As we see her transformation from being a feminine woman dressed in a pink dress and long dark hair, by the end it is clear that she has taken control of her new life.
Another important aspect that needs to be discussed about Perry’s music video is the narrative voice. First person is used as a narrative voice, thus giving more subjectivity to the story and engages the viewer/listener more effectively in the message conveyed by the lyrics: one woman struggles to restore power and strengths to her own life as she begins to see everything in a different way after joining the army. She promises that whatever the boy had done in the past and whatever would be his next move, she will not be affected as now she regained her self-confidence. Moreover, referring to the mise-en-scene one can easily notice that Katy Perry does not have her usual huge amount of makeup and star looks, although her black hair, clothing style and pink lipstick still are her key-symbols and people will always refer to them when describing the artist. Therefore, mise-en-scene is used to overturn and conform to gender stereotypes. At the beginning of the video, Katy Perry is denoted in a feminine, girly outfit of a dress with a jeans jacket. This conforms to the hegemonic view of women and is stereotypical, as it is the type of clothing women are seen wearing in music videos and films in general. However, Perry’s appearance is contrasted later on in the music video when she joins the army. The character cuts her hair, abandons her usual unique style in favor of army uniforms and swoops bold lipstick for bright pink lip-gloss.
In another train of thoughts, Katy Perry’s music video also abounds in signs and symbolic elements that call for a semiotic analysis. The most obvious symbolic scene is the scene where the protagonist is cutting her hair, symbolizing that she will no longer be the attractive girl that can be easily fooled by the opposite sex. She is now a new person that wants a more masculine approach to life making her equal to an eventual partner. The cutting of hair symbolizes her rejection of femininity, and also appears to be a form of self harm, taking out her anger at her boyfriend to herself. Also, when it comes to to Barthes’ narrative codes, the use of the action code is obvious, in order for the audience to make sense of the narrative, as the singer has started off the video with her character suffering a breakup in order for the audience to understand the rest of the plot and why she decided to join the army.
In the shot where the protagonist burns a note from her ex-boyfriend, the woman has no feminine shape, due to her protective attire, which could be seen as a metaphor for the way she has chosen this life not in order to serve her country, but to cover and protect herself. She is shown setting fire to the note from her boyfriend, that would be another act of defiance against him. The letter’s placing, between her and another man, symbolizes her total rejection of relationships. She is now setting a destructive boundary between her and all men, in order to protect herself from being hurt again. Furthermore, the final shot is another powerful symbol for her empowerment. Because almost all her skin is covered in military gear (camouflage cream, helmet, combat jacket), we can easily deduce that these are the trappings of her new life. However, these things are merely a mask that she has taken on in order to hide her old self and prevent herself from being hurt again.
On the technical side of things, there are many tracking and panning shots that follow Katy, and many close-ups of her. The editing techniques are something you would see in a film, for example a match on action like when she places her necklace down on the table. There is some editing to the beat such as when she was cutting her hair in the toilet, every cut was in time with the beat of the music so it makes it smoother. (Amponsah, Level, and Profile 2017; “Music Video Analysis – Part of Me by Katy Perry” 2017) There are also many interesting match cutting, for example, when Katy is firing the water gun, cutting to when she fired a real gun. This creates a sense of resemblance between Katy and the viewers, as it is saying that the life that Katy has in the video could be very similar to the life of the viewer: one day, they can break free and be independent as well. They also use scenes that match the lyrics like at the beginning of the song there was a shot of her driving away in her car when it said “days like this I want to drive away” making the relationship between the song and her even tighter.
In conclusion, there are many ways someone could interpret the narrative meaning of Katy Perry’s music video for “Part of Me.” Maybe it’s a coming of age metaphor that symbolizes how you can become a stronger, more independent woman when you’re on the bridge of emotional devastation. Maybe it’s a message about giving yourself over to something bigger than yourself, and how the journey is yours and no one should ever take that away from you. Or maybe it’s just the artist’s way of coping with her recent breakup with Russell Brand. Either way, the video has a strong connotation about women’s image in society, as Katy Perry is using the theme of female empowerment as the representation of women currently in the media industry is not that of empowerment but one of weakness and sexualisation.
Bibliography
Amponsah, Libby, Coombe Girls’s School Level, and View my Complete Profile. 2017. “Music Video Analysis: Katy Perry- A Part of Me.” Accessed January 13. http://libbyamponsah.blogspot.com/2012/03/music-video-analysis-katy-perry-part-of.html.
archive-John-Mitchell. 2017. “Katy Perry’s ‘Part Of Me’: What’s It All About?” MTV News. Accessed January 13. http://www.mtv.com/news/1681371/katy-perry-part-of-me-video-explained/.
Katy Perry – Part Of Me (Official). 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuwfgXD8qV8.
“Music Video Analysis – Part of Me by Katy Perry.” 2017. Accessed January 13. http://joeismusicvideoblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/music-video-analysis-part-of-me-by-katy.html.