The Male Gaze-Music Video

Rihanna-Work ft. Drake

In the first few seconds of the music video, Drake is shown to be watching Rihanna dance in a sexual way. Rihanna is wearing very little clothing and her top is see through so a lot of her body is revealed. However, Drake is just sitting casually on the sofa behind Rihanna and he is wearing a big and baggy jumper with baggy sweatpants. Which shows there is a big contrast between the type of clothing Rihanna is wearing compared to Drake.

About 23 seconds into the video, Rihanna faces the camera and it is a close up shot of her face and she looks behind her to look at Drake and then she turns to look directly at the camera. Here she is 'breaking the fourth wall' to show she knows what she is doing, dancing in front of him sexually and impressing him. She has a serious face like she is concentrating but she also has a seductive look in her eyes which shows she is kind of teasing him. After this there is a little clip of around 2 seconds that is of Rihanna's waist and she is dancing sexually and then it goes back to showing her face. This makes the audience watching the video focus on what type of dancing she is doing.

1 minute into the video, Drake stands up from the sofa and he appears behind Rihanna. Here, it is shown to be going against stereotypes as men are usually seen to be more in power and dominant however, Rihanna is standing in front of Drake which could imply that she has more confidence that him as he looks like he is hiding behind her and also that she has more power than him which contrasts with the start of the video and its like they have switch roles as at the beginning he was presented as dominant and controlling and making her dance in front of him.
At around 1 minute 14 seconds in, the power then switches back to Drake as Rihanna is dancing sexually in front of him again and he is smiling at her which shows that he is getting pleasure out of her dancing. Also her skirt is very short so there could be times when he can see more than the video revealed. Her dance movements are repeated throughout the whole video which gives connotations of sex and pleasure for the whole length of the video.



Approximately 1 minute 45 seconds into the video, there is contact between Rihanna and Drake which before this there hasn't been a lot of. Rihanna is sat on Drakes knee and he has his arm around her and is looking at her body in a sexual way. Whereas she has her hands to her self and is sort of holding herself as if she doesn't want to be sitting on him. Her facial expression shows that she knows what she is doing and it portrays that she isn't doing it for herself she is doing it for him.
At 2 minutes 10 seconds, Drake starts singing and this is when the roles switch again as Rihanna is dancing in the background now which shows he has more power than her. Then he is shown to be  'breaking the fourth wall' as it is a close up of him and he is looking directly at the camera which could imply that they are equal as they both 'break the fourth wall' in the video just at different times.
Then towards the end of the video, around the 3 minute mark. Rihanna and Drake start sexually dancing together which connotates sex and pleasure again but doing it together this time. This also could imply that the whole video has been building up to this as they are now together. This leaves the impression that the whole video was to pleasure Drake as it gets more and more sexual as the video goes.