Analyzing Tiwa savage’s Koroba through Laura Mulvey and bell hooks

In a world where visual culture often reflects and reinforces systems of power, music videos stand at the intersection of entertainment and ideology. Tiwa Savage’s Koroba, with its vibrant visuals and bold lyrics, offers a compelling site for critical analysis through the lens of feminist film theory. By applying Laura Mulvey’s theory of the “Male Gaze” and bell hooks’ concept of the “Oppositional Gaze,” we can uncover the complex dynamics of gender, power, and resistance in the video. This essay explores how Koroba simultaneously engages with and subverts traditional visual politics, offering a layered representation of Black womanhood, sexuality, and agency in a globalized cultural landscape.

Understanding the Theoretical Frameworks

Before diving into the music video, it is essential to briefly understand the two critical lenses at play. Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema introduced the concept of the “Male Gaze.” Mulvey argued that mainstream cinema positions women as passive objects of visual pleasure, existing primarily to satisfy the heterosexual male viewer’s desire. The camera, the narrative, and the audience are aligned with a male perspective, reducing female characters to erotic spectacles rather than complex subjects.

Conversely, bell hooks’ “Oppositional Gaze,” articulated in her 1992 book Black Looks: Race and Representation, challenges both the dominance of the male gaze and the erasure of Black female subjectivity. hooks emphasizes that Black women, historically denied the right to look, have developed an oppositional gaze—one that resists objectification and reclaims agency. Where Mulvey’s theory often centers white femininity, hooks expands the conversation to race, arguing that Black women must navigate a double burden of racialized and gendered marginalization in visual culture.

With these frameworks in mind, we turn to Koroba, a song that outwardly celebrates material success and female sexual autonomy, but beneath the surface, complicates the visual economy in which Black women have historically been placed.

The Performance of Power and Pleasure

From the opening scenes of Koroba, Tiwa Savage commands attention. Draped in luxurious fabrics, adorned with bold accessories, and surrounded by dancers and opulent settings, she presents herself not as an object, but as the orchestrator of the spectacle. While she undeniably performs her sexuality—her body is accentuated, movements are sensual, and the camera lingers on traditionally eroticized features—Savage retains control over the narrative. The lyrics assert her unapologetic enjoyment of wealth and sexual agency, challenging moralistic critiques of women who benefit from transactional relationships: “If I follow politician, you go hear am for paper / They go call am prostitution, but I no be their savior.”

Through Mulvey’s lens, we might initially read these images as reproducing the male gaze—Savage is styled in a way that appeals to heteronormative beauty standards, and the camera often frames her in poses that could be interpreted as objectifying. However, a closer examination reveals subversion. Unlike traditional portrayals of women in music videos where the camera possesses the female body, here, Savage seems to possess the camera. She looks directly into it, meets the viewer’s gaze with confidence, and often stands at the visual and narrative center. She is not passively being looked at; she is performing, but for herself and her own community. The pleasure she expresses appears self-directed, not reliant on male validation.

bell hooks and the Power of Looking Back

bell hooks’ theory adds a deeper layer to this analysis. hooks emphasizes the importance of the “right to look” for Black women—a right historically denied in both media and real life. In Koroba, Savage does not just look; she stares back. Her direct eye contact with the camera asserts her visibility in a world that often erases Black women’s subjectivity.

This is not mere performance—it’s defiance. When she dons traditional Nigerian attire, dances with confidence, and uses Yoruba-inflected English, she also stakes a claim to cultural specificity. hooks would argue that this insistence on Black cultural expression disrupts white supremacist and patriarchal expectations of what femininity should look like.

In Koroba, there’s also a playfulness that reflects hooks’ idea that the oppositional gaze can be a source of joy, not just critique. Savage’s aesthetic choices—mixing traditional African elements with high fashion, combining Afrobeats with pop—create a visual and sonic space where Black femininity is both modern and rooted, desirable and autonomous. In this space, the viewer is invited not only to witness Savage’s performance but to reconsider what it means to view a Black woman on her own terms.

Complication and Contradiction

Still, it would be reductive to view Koroba as wholly resistant to the male gaze. Music videos operate within capitalist structures that often reward commodified sexuality. Savage is still performing in a genre and medium shaped by global beauty standards, some of which may cater—consciously or not—to male fantasies. The sexualized visuals, while empowering in some contexts, may be co-opted or misread through patriarchal filters. This is where Mulvey’s critique remains relevant: even a performance of agency can be recoded as objectification within dominant viewing frameworks.

However, what makes Koroba powerful is its refusal to resolve these contradictions. Instead of offering a sanitized version of empowerment, Savage embraces the messy realities of navigating power as a woman in the public eye. She acknowledges the moral double standards that judge women for leveraging their desirability while excusing men who exploit their power. In doing so, she forces the viewer to confront their own assumptions about agency, respectability, and desire.

Conclusion: Reclaiming the Frame

Tiwa Savage’s Koroba is a rich text that invites multiple readings. Through the lens of Laura Mulvey, we recognize how the visual grammar of the video could potentially reproduce the male gaze. Yet, through bell hooks’ oppositional gaze, we see how Savage reclaims her image and her narrative, using visual culture not only to assert her agency but to celebrate it unapologetically. She resists being merely looked at; she insists on being seen.

In a media landscape where Black women are too often silenced, erased, or hypersexualized, Koroba offers a complex portrayal of what it means to exist as a visible, powerful, and self-defined woman. Savage’s performance is not without contradictions—but it is within these contradictions that new possibilities for representation emerge. Through performance, pleasure, and political subtext, Tiwa Savage challenges viewers to rethink how they look, and who they look for.