Heaven Essay

With reference to Emeli Sande's 'Heaven', how realistic are the representations offered by the video? In your answer, you should consider the social and cultural context.

This essay will be looking over the representations provided by Emeli Sande's Heaven Music Video, full of references to religion, culture and gender.

The video focuses on men and women equally and there is no male gaze directed towards women represented in this video. A shot of a woman in a red dress is featured in the beginning of the video and she walks away from the camera refusing to be sexualised. The shot was also repeated at the end of the video. It also focuses on the experiences of men and women by also including lots of close up shots of them.

Street life is represented in a montage of people within the people, places and events shot in traditionally working-class district of East London, its shot in Bethnal Green. There is a extreme-close up shot of a middle aged male who is presumably homeless, and he is giving strong direct address. This music video has themes of diversity (and secondary themes such as poverty, illness & injustice), which is conveyed by the shot type. Furthermore the variety of ethnicities in this music video shows how diversity and multicultural these urban areas of London are. Since the video focuses on aspects like religion and working class /poverty , adding different ethnicities demonstrates how everyone can be involved and affected and nobody is excluded.

The music video of Heaven is full of references to religion and spirituality, more specifically christianity. The video features shots of crosses, a person with wings tattooed on his back, possibly a reference to angels' wings and there is a shot of Virgin Mary. The artist herself stated  'After having a discussion with my producer Naughty Boy, about what it meant to be good in this day and age, and how it’s harder for our generation because things move so fast, and how there’s so many influences and avenues, and he said, You just have to keep your heart clean. It was the imagery of a clean or dirty heart that inspired me.' Lots of shots, where the artist and other actors are looking up to the sky are included, very likely that they are looking at heaven.

In terms of artist representation Emeli Sande is not being sexualised, the artist is presented as a respectable, admirable and elegant woman, which is not a common form of representation of women in the music industry. The artist keeps giving direct address to the audience by looking at the camera directly and she possibly breaks the fourth wall that way. The artist also establishes authorage by having her mohawk-like hairstyle dyed in a bright colour.

In conclusion the music video makes sophisticated references towards ethnicity, gender and urban life. The female artist is not exualised but actually empowered, uncommon in the music industry.