Animals by Maroon 5 is the latest video causing huge controversy in the industry and for the band. The song itself has a very good catchy beat with Adam's distinctive voice featuring and we don't think any further into the meaning of the song until we see the video. The timing of this video could not have come at a worse time with a number of stalking allegations, celebrity nude photos being leaked online and the recent headlines of sexual assault. The video can almost be so depicted that we can think Adam Levine himself is behind some of these awful headline, but we won't because we just see him as a very sexy male who happens to be in a band. The video at first starts out ok and seemingly innocent; with the actor (Levine's actual wife; Behati Prinsloo in real life) walking in to a butcher and choosing some meat to walk away with, we then see Adam looking over his shoulder at this stunning girl (we assume in an innocent 'i fancy you way') but we later realize it is not at all innocent. There are scenes in which Adam is in the back of the butchers with all the carcases covered in blood and he is climbing on them and hanging of the hooks as if he is testing if it can hold an actual humans weight. More scenes include him standing out in the rain (could be seen as romantic?) looking up at Prinsloo and taking more photos of her to put in his room with all his other stalker taken photographs. We then see him actually interact with her in a bar but he just gets dismissed by him which would annoy any stalker he then follows her home and waits until she is asleep to sneak in her apartment and take photos of her sleeping. He then risks it even more by getting into bed with her and stroking her hair as if they were really lovers. Then the final scenes may be the most disturbing. We see Adam and Behati embracing each other naked and then they are covered in whats supposed to be and what we assume blood from the animals carcases. they continue touching and kissing each other whilst this blood is being poured all over them. It's unclear if this was happening in real life or if it was part of Adam's psychotic dreams. The video hugely relates to Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory and the alternative the female gaze theory. The male gaze objectifies women through camera angles showing off their bodies and the female gaze does the exact same thing but it objectifies men. The camera focuses on mens naked torsos, arms and their jawline. The video could also be put into Andrew Godwin's theory that states the lyrics and visuals relationship. In the song, Adam is referring to the girl as an animal and that he'll 'hunt her down' in which case he does; he stalks the female and has actual animals in the video (carcases, but animals none the less)His video could certainly win the award for the most disturbing video of the year and the opinions of Adam Levine may change.
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