Wide Awake analysis

I thought that Katy Perry’s wide awake music video was ideal as it contains bright colours and a strong narrative that appeals to young girls and keeps them interested but also she attracts male attention as the clothing that is featured in her videos are very suggestive.

There is a strong relationship between the visuals and the lyrics as the visuals shows Katy Perry throughout her life and during this she is trying to direct herself of what to expect in the future, In the first scene we see her taking off her wig which could connotes the fact that the wig helps Katy put on a stage persona and engages the audience into the real her and her world. Also she appears on the camera to have the edited clouds and sky but in reality she on green screen which shows a hidden a realistic world of the media and the edited video shows her concealed life that she lives.

Before the music begins, Katy is talking to a member of her crew before shutting the door which could suggest that she is shutting out the fame and wants to break away from the limelight, We then follow Katy into a mysterious place, which feels a lot like Alice in wonderlandwhere Katy shows several different places that represent various moments of her life which for fans gives a deeper insight into her life and can relate to her.

A high angle shot of Katy shows Katys dark side and makes her appear more inferior to the audience and also shows that even though she has had a lot of ups and downs it shows that she still rises above it to the top. As Katy enters the maze we become more involved with the lyrics as she is showing her life as a journey and in the end there is only one way out which concludes to symbolism of the maze.

In the press we know of Perrys personal life and her very public divorce which she shows through her use of the colour black which appeals with the idea of Katy going through a dark phase in her life and we can really connect with her and feel involved in the story she perceives as she blames fame for the whole reason the two split and couldn’t make things work, which really unsettles her.

In the end we see her escape from the maze, we could be seen as her escaping from the world of even going back to reality after such a difficult discovery of her life.Throughout the video Katy is guiding a little girl who seems to be watching her throughout. We only realise at the end of the video, that the young girl is infact Katy when she was younger and katy wishes that if she “only knew then what I know now” then she would make a lot of changes and tries to some what warn herself of the troubles ahead.

The little girl (Katy) gives older (Katy) a gift, which she tightly conceals into her hand. In a later scene we see Katy open her hand to find out that the gift was infact a butterfly, we suggest that Katy is butterfly and wants to be free and spread her wings in the world.

The final scene we see Katherine go back on stage as her stage personal Katy Perry and perform one of her previous songs and show Katy go back into her reality which is being a star and brush aside the lows of her life.