"Shut up and drive" Mise en scene

Am analysing the "Shut up and drive" video and my main focus is on the mise en scene of the video. I have taken a few important screen shots from the video where am going to be talking about on this post.

This first picture is showing a leopard skin heel coming out of a Ferrari f430. To me the start of the video is misleading because normally in those circumstances we would expect a dominate male figure to pull out of a Ferrari as it’s more of a male’s toy. However we see a heel pull out which indicates to me it’s a sex, feisty and powerful women because she has money to be having a Ferrari.


The next picture demonstrates a women mechanic which again is misleading to us because it’s rare to find women mechanic. Therefore this shows that the video is going for something different as two major aspects has been spotted in the start of the video as misleading.




This picture is the establishing shot of where the actual video is set in. In the picture we can see that the video is set in a garage that is fall of women mechanics and famous junk cars. However the crucial part of the picture is Rihanna who’s in the middle of shot posing, which demonstrates another sexy appeal.


This fourth picture is showing that Rihanna is different to the other girls in the video because she wants the main attention on her. Therefore that’s why she is looking glamorous whilst the other girls have the mechanic clothing as she needs to stand out from everything else around her.


This picture shows that Rihanna isn’t afraid to get down and dirty by working with the cars. Again she does the sexy poses when she’s working which demonstrates a sex masculine look to the audience. Also Rihanna has always been portrayed as a good girl on her previous videos therefore those shots link to her album of “Good girl gone bad”, as the title of the album has elements shown in the video “Shut up and drive”.


This picture shows Rihanna and the mechanic girls’ changing their whole look as the setting of the video is also changed. Again she’s different to the rest of the girls as she wears the sexy masculine look this time instead of acting the sexy masculine look, whereas the girls with her change their look to girlie type. Once more Rihanna wants to be singled out from the rest of the video by having that particular look.


This last screen shot is the last change in the video. The screen shot is showing Rihanna’s new look as she has gone for a school girl look. However with the costume she is wearing it still has a hint out to the audience that she isn’t the innocent girl we all first thought. Again this can be related to the title of her new album “Good girl gone bad”.