How Music Videos Can Be Informative and Persuasive
When examining with a rhetorical lens, a device is typically considered to be persuading an audience to do something. Whether it is to buy a product, change ways, or something of this nature, rhetorical artifacts are commonly perceived to have an ultimate end goal: persuade. Can an artifact do more than that? Is it possible that an artifact, including a music video, can be informative as well? Beyoncé's "Move Your Body" music video is an excellent example of this, which is why it will serve as the focus of this particular analysis.
In 2011, Beyoncé showed her support for Michelle Obama's campaign to make American youth healthier and more physically active by creating the "Move Your Body" music video (which is embedded above). "Move Your Body" is "a reworking of her song 'Get Me Bodied'" (Ulaby). In the music video, Beyoncé dances alongside several young students in a school cafeteria. This music video is very different from most of her other music videos, including "Ring the Alarm" and "Formation." Why is that? What message is Beyoncé attempting to convey with this music video? In this music video, Beyoncé is informing young Americans that it is important to be healthy and teaching them how they can be physically active. Instead of taking a political or social stance—like she does in the "Formation" music video—Beyoncé is simply teaching her young audience about the importance of being healthy.
Furthermore, in the "Move Your Body" music video, Beyoncé sings about different forms of physical activity that can help young people be healthy. For example, the first thing she sings is "let me see you run / put your knees up in the sky" ("Move Your Body). Beyoncé is informative, teaching her young audience how to be physical activity. To some degree, she is being persuasive because she encourages young people to join her doing the dance moves through the lyrics and the music video. However, the main goal appears to simply teach people how to move their body in a way that will help them be healthier. The music video's imagery and visual rhetoric focuses on the different physical activities as seen in the dancing. In a post titled "Why Beyoncé Is Perfect For Rhetorical Analysis," Kaitlin Dyer discusses how the "Move Your Body" music video—like other aspects of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" Campaign—aims "to teach children how to eat healthier and become active so that they grow up creating a healthier America" (Dyer). The emphasis on healthy food at the beginning of the music video and the emphasis on the dance moves are acts of visual rhetoric aimed to teach the youth of America.
Although the main goal of the "Move Your Body" music video is to be informative and teach young Americans how to be physically active, there are still acts of persuasion being done. In this case, persuasion and teaching work together to convey the message of how it is important to be healthy. That is clear in this music video because Beyoncé is teaching children how to be physically active, but she is also attempting to persuade them to actually perform the actions. The upbeat music, the call-to-action phrases (e.g. "let me see you run") persuasion, and the commands (e.g. "jump") encourage the young audience to follow suit and become physically active.