Music Video Analysis - Spice Girls - Wannabe

In the spice girls wannabe video you can see that the director has stuck to many of godwins theories.
Godwins theory includes the idea of genre characteristics, in this particular music video this is shown through the spice girls in a number of ways.

this image shows the spice girls performing a choreographed routine. There are only a couple of shots where the Spice Girls perform a choreographed routine as the band as whole because theyre target audience (young / teenaged girls) where not represented in this way at the time of the music video release (1996).
In the early 90s the slogan of girl bands and female pop artists was 'Girl Power' this was the second stage of the upprisal of women in Britain. the aim of pop women getting behind 'Girl Power' was to eliminate the exclusivism of the sexes thus having very few heavily genre characteristics noticable in this music video.

this is secondly backed up by the way in which the Spice Girls are dressed. all over the world, girlbands were being dressed highly provocatively with matching/similar very feminie outfits in their music videos to tie in with godwins theory of the voyeristic view of the female body, presenting them on a very sexual platform, i.e Destinys Child and 3LW.
The spice girls however, where bought onto the scene with a different approach. All of the different spice girls where marketed cleverly to fit into a different social group opening their market- this also meant that in all of their music videos they were styled differently opening them up to a mass market of all types of females all over the world. The Spice Girls where conventionally and famously styled individually, on a whole- not a single one of them where presented in a sexual way and the spice girls where never put on a sexual platform in terms or marketing them as a group, these are how the group where styled conventionally :-

Scary Spice - leopard, african, aztec prints and block colours
Posh Spice - typical Chanel inspired monochrome dresses and stilletoes
Ginger Spice - outrovert, edgey, one off peices. bold colours, studds and sparkels
Baby Spice - pig tails, white dresses
Sporty Spice - tracksuits, trainers and hoodies

Godwin also identified the clear link between lyrics and visuals. The main theme in the song 'Wannabe' is loyalty and friendship. Throughout the video the girls are seen sticking together and acting as a tight unit through a regal party which they have crashed.
'if you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my friends' this hook is always couple with the imagery of the girls in a group as a whole like i said earlier, this doesn't happen very often- it is quite a free spirited video to reflect the attitudes of young girls in this time period.


Other than the hook there are not many shots where the girl band come together as a collective. This suggests the come uppance and individuality of girls of the time period.

There are absolutely no jump cuts or clear cuts in this music video- however there are many very smooth and brilliantly executed invisible cuts to make the camera seem as if it is continually rolling. This ties in with Godwins theory of the notion of looking as the camera is used in a handy cam sort of way to seem asif its someone following them through the perspective of one of their friends. this ties in with the themes of frienship and loyalty and sticking together.