Selena Gomez - Hands To Myself (Music Video Analysis)

Synopsis:

In the music video, Mason plays the role of an actor while Gomez plays his stalker. The video begins with a handcuffed Selena Gomez writhing around on a bed, donning an engagement ring, a wig and black silk robe. Shots of marked maps and an image collage of Mason on a wall are then shown. Gomez later breaks into Mason's modern penthouse apartment with the intention of fulfilling a sexual fantasy of him. On arrival, Gomez takes off her robe and wears only spiked stilettos and black lingerie consisting of a bra and high-waisted underwear. She searches through his colour-coordinated closet and tries on one of his dress shirts. Dancing in the shirt, Gomez proceeds to smelling his cologne bottle.

Gomez is then depicted writhing around on his bed caressing herself as she imagines a love scene with Mason. In another segment, she is shown taking a hot bath, imagining him in a shower. Gomez also watches a marathon of movies in which Mason stars in. Tired, she proceeds back upstairs wrapped in a bed sheet where one of Mason's film posters titled The Obsession is shown at the staircase wall. Gomez then passes out on his bed. Mason later arrives home and realises that something is wrong and calls the police who arrest Gomez.In a plot twist, the video ends zooming out from the preceding events, showing Gomez and Mason happily cuddling on a couch watching a film called Hands to Myself in which they starred.

This is one of the first shots in the music video, this represents Selena Gomez's character's obsession with this mystery man. The vast array of pictures of him makes us believe she is more than obsessed, she may even be stalking him. A over exaggeration of your everyday fan.

This shot is around the minute mark within the video, it shows Selena inside of Mason's house in her underwear walking around his walk in wardrobe. You can see by her outfit, the black colours and the amount of showing skin that she maybe is rather promiscuous and has a lot of fantasies about Mason.

In this shot we see Mason, Selena's fantasy, Selena is watching one of his movies while she is lying on his coach. Mason is obviously centre frame because he is the main person involved within the scene of the movie and also the music video. It may not be a coincidence that he is shirtless, this resembles Selena's Fantasy of being with a HollyWood Movie star.

The shot here is in the middle of the video, its a visual depiction of Selena's desires of being intimate with Mason. The music video really works on the lyrics of the song and the tension building lines.

This is an important shot in the video, Selena is walking up the staircase and the camera flips round and faces this movie poster titled 'the obsession' this is a visual reminder that Selena is obsessed with this movie star (Mason) rather ironically placed on the wall by the staircase. This was obviously done on purpose because it is to add further proof about Selena's dying obsession for Mason. The colours are dark yet the title is in red which stands out along with his white/grey face in the poster.

We see Mason arriving at his home, realising something isn't right, he makes his way upstairs after coming across a piece of clothing. The stairway is lit up in Blue LED's, this may be a signal that there is somebody upstairs, of course it may just be coincidental but maybe the producers implemented it into the shot to add more depth.

The next two shots show us that Selena is going to get caught for trespassing and breaking and entering. We see two police cars pull up outside of the house front entrance, Sirens and lights on in dramatic fashion. Surely this is the end of the road in terms of Selena's little plan.

This is the closing moments of the video, what's interesting is that it seems to have been a movie within a movie, with Selena getting into the cop car the camera lens pans out and the frame widens and we see a flat screen TV appear and then we realise that maybe what we were seeing throughout the whole video was a movie sequence after all.



In the final shot of the video we see Mason and Gomez on the coach together. The music video led us to believe one thing when really something else completely different is going on. Looks like Selena got her fantasy after all.