"Run the world" vs "Dream"

In the "Run the world (girls)" music video a clear binary opposite is made between the men and the women. At 0.20 minutes in the music video, we get an establishing shot of men running with riot shields and batons. This is a very violent way to portray men in the video, especially compared to Beyonce, who so far in this video has only been shown dancing by herself. The men in this video are presented very much as dangerous and predatory figures. However, despite the seemingly imminent danger of the approaching men, Beyonce is not shown to be phased. Typically within media, women are shown as being victims of men, and when they are they are often weak and frightful. Beyonce completely defying this could represent her taking back the power from the patriarchy by not giving into the fear they've tried to subdue her with. This conflict between male and female is an example of Levi-Strauss' theory of binary oppositions.

Similarly, in the Dizzee Rascal "Dream" music video, the binary opposite is Dizzee and the puppets, and the woman playing the piano. The woman represents an old white Britain, one that is conservative and reluctant to change. Dizzee, on the other hand, represents a young multicultural Britain that embraces the new and strange. The woman sitting at the piano has control over the puppets, who are limited by her control. However, there are moments when the puppets do things that make the woman uncomfortable, which could show them fighting back against her, but most likely portrays how she is disturbed by the harsh reality of their lives and would rather choose to ignore it than help in any way. However, Dizzee not being a puppet shows that he has perhaps managed to break away from her control, in a similar way to how Beyonce broke away form the men's control. However, this is in the opposite direction, as this is a man reclaiming power from a controlling woman.

Dizzee Rascal's music video also shows the conflict between white police and young black men. This is shown at 1:04 in the music video when the two black men are caught stealing and one is attacked by the police officer with a baton. Despite it being portrayed in a humorous way, there is a clear message of police brutality. This is highly relevant as, especially within the last twenty years, police brutality is an issue that makes appearances on the news regularly. Despite how long the issue has been going on for, consistently white police officers are still getting away with it and the issue does not seem to be improving. This could be in part because many people in power are white and for them, police brutality is not something they would ever experience and therefore may have a harder time understanding the grave seriousness of it. Dizzee's portrayal of the attack as comedic could reflect this as through the eyes of white Britain, in this case the woman sitting at the piano, such issues are not taken as seriously as they should be. For white Britain, police brutality is such a foreign concept that all they can do is laugh at it. This links into Gilroy's theory of post-colonialism, which states that the representation of groups (in this case black youths) are still affected by ideologies carried over from the time of colonial discourse.

In contrast, Beyonce's video shows a conflict between figures of authority and a young community, but both presented groups are multicultural. At 0:47, there is a long shot of the men, many of which are carrying batons. This is a weapon typically used by police officers, and therefore this immediately plants the idea in the audience's head that these men are somewhat representative of authority. However, unlike in Dizzee Rascal's "dream" where every police officer is shown to be white, in this it is much more mixed ethnically.  The women are the same. This presents a very different idea, as there is no clear show of one race having power over another. One could argue that this presents a much more complex issue where racial imbalance is still able to take place despite the illusion of equality as presented in this. However one could also argue that race was not the main focus of the video, and instead Beyonce was more interested in presenting the dynamic between men and women, which even the title of the song references. Rather than make commentary on the racial issues of our world, she highlighted it by making both sides ethnically diverse, perhaps showing how things should be and in that sense making people notice how it often isn't in our world.