David Wilson is back, taking Mabel to places she has never gone before, in the unapologetic and hugely inventive promo for Look At My Body Pt II.Accompanied by the sultry Shygirl, Wilson presents Mabel in a succession of witty scenes which challenge the male gaze. He directs the singers through takedowns of the established historical context in art and religion, and shows that it's the female who is the superpower of the human race. It's a visual counterpoint to Mabel's quip throughout the song: sorry, not sorry.And for fans of David Wilson's work it provides a number of treats - not least when the live action vignettes are interrupted by a bravura animation section, where Mabel transforms into a giant Earth mother and merges into the Earth itself. It's very much in the style of Wilson's classic videos for Tame Impala and Royal Blood. This maximalist vision takes Mabel's longstanding inclination to playfulness to the next level. It has something to say, anchored by confident performances by the artists - and Wilson's top-notch direction.

Canadian alternative artist Debby Friday explores the idea of the male gaze, and subverting it in sensational fashion, in the video for What A Man, co-directed by Friday and Kevan Funk.Friday plays auditioning actress, poledancer and artist's model, in each scenario becoming objectified by male viewers, yet finally getting the upper hand. As a counterpoint, Friday and Funk also recreate a classical painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few female artists of the Baroque, for reasons that Friday explains below.“The WHAT A MAN music video is loosely based on the famous essay, Ways of Seeing, by English art critic John Berger as well as paintings by the Italian Baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi - in particular, her iconic work Judith Slaying Holofernes," explains Friday."In 1972, Berger released Ways of Seeing as both a television series via the BBC and a book. Both the series and the text function as image-based explorations of the depiction of women in Western art and culture. This work has been massively influential in cultural theory, as it introduced the concept of 'the male gaze'."Gentileschi is distinctive for being one of the only female professional artists of her era. Her paintings draw from myths and Biblical stories and almost always feature women as protagonists and equals to men. Arguably her most famous work, Judith Slaying Holofernes, is thought to be a self-portrait that depicts her as Judith slaying a Holofernes who resembles Agostino Tassi, a man who raped her when she was 17."Both the essay and the paintings served as frameworks for the video. The same way that Gentileschi painted herself into images of other women is the same way I feel that every woman can see ourselves in much of Gentileschi’s story and her work. To be a woman and an artist in this world is to be, in a way, a shapeshifter. You take on the shape of whatever and whoever is looking at you - whether that be a camera, a phone, a lover, a thief, a killer. Always and all at once, you are a spectacle, a flower, a treasure, a ditch, a bitch, a miracle.“When I look at Artemisia’s paintings, I feel myself transported and transformed into the emotional field of Judith, of Jael, of Susanna. Her hand is my hand, her sword is my sword, her pain is my pain. I have always identified with women who were wild and brazen - survivors, people who exist and persist despite. I have always looked up to women who were willing to be ‘bad’ in the name of living thoroughly.”