The visual appearance of this music video I’m not yours is roughly formed of two parts: narratives and dance. What is worthy of mention is that the plot borrows from one of the chuanqi (tales of wonder) in Taiping Guangji written by XueYusi, a literary genre of some real story of the early Tang dynasty of ancient China. It tells about a businesswoman called SanNiang running a guesthouse and selling donkeys as a side income. And Zhao coincidently discovers the secret that other guests are turned into donkeys because they eat the food produced by magic. Finally, under the tricks of Zhao, SanNiang is into a trap of its devising. This music video’s narratives adapted the story’s first half. Furthermore, the identities of heroines were blurred to a multi-role of businesswomen, fox demons, and even prostitutes to trick man guests with their beautiful images, finally turning them into donkeys by magic.

It could be seen that this music video cuts between linear narratives of the story mentioned above and the dance scene. Goodwin (1992) associated dance with a kind of visualized music. Thus, it is essential to include dance in the analysis of this music video. When comes to the role of the dancing scene in a music video, builds strong connections between the viewers and the singer through eye contact, gestures and facial expressions. The group dance performing in the blue light address a participatory even synaesthesia to the viewers which also prompts the star’s personality. (Arnold,2017,p.144) In addition, The dancing part also takes the role of narrative at the final of the music video, with the heroines dancing on the stage as the plot said. 

The subjects of Girls’ power could be noticeable in the lyrics of the song and that is what Jolin wants to convey. What’s more, there exerts a two-way effect. Pop music with electronic elements provides an innovational aesthetic of rewriting an Eastern ancient story. Additionally, the girl’s power-subject embedded in lyrics also contributes to reconstructing the old story in this video, shaking the images of women in traditional literature and even myths, such as the fox demon who break off from love story narratives, in turn, is described as someone with the power to control man, pretty and dangerous. On the other side, the mysterious and oriental cultural pictures add to the music’s aesthetics. As the term pointed out by Vernials, the added value that visual did add value to the song itself. In conclusion, the relationship between visual and audio could be seen as a complement, or as a kind of cooperation. ( Vernal,p.209)

Reference

Arnold, G. et al. (2017) Music/video histories, aesthetics, media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Goodwin, A. (1993) Dancing in the distraction factory : music television and popular culture. London: Routledge.

Vernallis, C. (2013) Unruly media YouTube, music video, and the new digital cinema. New York: Oxford University Press.

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