Within the video she is imitating Slash from guns and roses, and she is wearing clothing like how he wore it, and so this is an example of intertextuality. She is saying in the lyrics that she is a rockstar and so she plays on the famous performer Slash and dresses up like him to further amplify her rockstar image to the audience. When watching the music video, Rihanna is playing a guitar and is playing on a stage, with a band as backup, this is one of Goodwins theories, where you have a performance in a music video. Rihanna also objectifies her self within the video, by sitting on the floor naked and painted black, this is not like an ordinary performance video, as most performance videos just have the star singing into a microphone and or playing an instrument.
Throughout the music video we see many close ups of Rihanna, the main body part that gets the most close ups was here lips, this can be satisfying for the male gaze as she projects her lips in a sexual manner furthermore her body is fragmented, so in the music video her lips her eyes and her mid section are all fragmented during the music video. There is numerous parts of the music video where iconography is there, such as the rockstar guitar and how she plays it, she places it like how Slash played it in a very famous music video, and so by this pose and how she dressed she is further amplifying her rockstar image.
This music video is stereotypical to the fact that most rockstars wear black and have there music based around dark, and her dark makeup and the black and white effect really portray the rockstar image once again. disjuncture has not occurred, but she has points in the video where disjuncture does occur, where she says "F**k the law" and that lyric has no relation to the music video performance.
Laura Mulvey has a theory that there are male and female gazes, so in this particular music video, she would say that Rihanna has attracted the male gaze, but I contest this theory because some female viewers will admire Rihanna for her music video and will gain the gaze of the female viewers, not just the male viewers, in my opinion there shouldn't be sexest gazes but just a sexual gaze.
During the video we encounter a lot of illustration, this is where the lyrics match the visuals, throughout the music video she mentions she's a "rockstar" and she is dressed up at Slash so this shows that illustration occurred.
In the music video there is not a balance between narrative and performance, the entire music video is a performance video and is shown when Rihanna is playing the guitar and singing. also the music of the music video match the same as the cuts, so for example Rihanna may play the guitar and then as soon as she hits the guitar the shot changes to her naked covered in paint, and its a jump cut, from one scene to the other, there are not many smooth transitions throughout the music video this is because of the genre of the music video is very rock and roll and you generally associate rock and roll with chaos and anarchy and so the editing will reflect that, and so will have jump cuts and very aggressive editing, and will not use any slow transition fades.
During the music video we come across many close ups and extreme close ups of Rihanna when she is dancing or showing off her skin and is wearing less clothing. The camera movements are in time with the musicm so when the base drops or there is a heavy beat the camera may sway from side to side or may zoom in and out very quickly.
There is a master shot, this is where Rihanna is on a stage singing with her band in the background and this is used continuously throughout the music video, its a long shot of her generally but sometimes the camera movd upwards so it gave an aerial view of her and the band.
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