The music video for Beyoncé's "Pretty Hurts" uses a mixture of performance and narrative scenes to showcase Beyoncé's talents and portray the pressures that women face from society and the media to look beautiful. The opening shot is a close-up of Beyoncé looking in the mirror, setting an intimate tone. Throughout the video, locations are either home-like or a beauty pageant setting, contrasting Beyoncé's posture and body language in each. Her frequent costume changes also illustrate how image becomes important when letting society dictate self-worth. Beyoncé stands out alone but blends in among other women, showing that uniqueness can be forgotten in groups focusing on beauty standards.

1. Beyoncé – ‘Pretty Hurts’
Analysis
Asia Thomas Jennings

2. Overview
The song is mainly focused on the pressures that young women face in order to feel
beautiful under the judging eye’s of society. The song encourages young women to
love themselves and accept their appearance and who they are as a person. Beyoncé
also tries to instil the idea that it only matter what one thinks of one’s self, not
anybody else’s opinion. Because there is such a powerful message being presented
through the audio, the visuals had to follow suit. Beyoncé chose to use a mixture of
performance and narrative in her music video in order to showcase her own talents but
also to show the audience how the media and societies pressures have real effects on
people.

3. Opening shot
The opening shot for a music video is usually very important as it sets the scene for
the rest of the video and audiences already have certain expectations of what they will
see throughout the video. In ‘Pretty Hurts’ Beyoncé used a close up of her face looking
in the mirror which lasts approximately 0:03 seconds. This is fairly long as in most
newer music videos, the editing style is usually quite fast. The close up could have
been done to establish a level of intimacy between the audience and the artist and
possibly show some vulnerability in the way that we already see the constant self
reflection due to the scrutiny of the media industry.

4. Mise En Scene - Setting
Throughout the video there is an extreme lack of
establishing/ location shots due to how many close ups of
either the artist or the other characters in the narrative.
However, of what we can see, many of the locations either
tend to be at a home-like environment or a dressing
room for a beauty pageant which is theme of the
narrative. The home location could have been done again
to try and identify with the audience and show similarities
between the struggles the artist faces and the audience’s
themselves.

5. Mise En Scene – Costume
As you can see, during the course of the music video, the artist changes costume to
the point of excess. This may have been done deliberately done to illustrate just
how important image becomes when one lets society dictate how the one feels
about one’s self.

6. Mise En Scene – Body Language
It is interesting to note that when the artist is placed in the home-like environment, the
posture and body language is always lowered and slouched, whereas as I the beauty
pageant environment the posture is good and the artist is nearly always smiling not
stage. This could have been done to show the contrast between how the artist may
feel behind closed doors and what she may show the media.

7. Mise En Scene - Positioning
Often when alone in the home-like environment, the artist takes up most of the shot
and is certainly the focal point of what is important in the shot. However, it is
interesting to note that when the artist is in the pageant environment, she tends to
blend in more with the other characters as there are so many on the stage. This
contrast could have been shown to illustrate how unique everyone is and when alone
she is able to acknowledge this, however when everyone groups together, people can
tend to forget the fact that they are unique and may blend into the background.