The Male Gaze

In today’s society, music controls the way we live our lives. The influence that music has on society has broadened throughout the years and with social media being one of the world’s top priority, the fan base and spectrum for music in general has expanded significantly. Music is used to express feelings, moods, circumstances, experiences, knowledge, and so much more. With this being the case, the lyrics of any song can be interpreted differently by each and every listener. Many song lyrics give positive messages, promoting well-being, whiles others give negative messages, promoting violence, criminal behaviors, sexual contents, and disrespect towards others. With this being said, music reflects what the public demands, and in many cases the negative messages are often times what sells more than those music giving positive messages.

Director Sut Jhally, in his documentary film, “Dreamworlds 3: Desire, sex, and power in music videos”, analyzes the issue of how women are portrayed in the music world. Jhally, in his film argues how music and media has become a proud industry when it comes to advertising women, all for the benefit of popularity and record sales. Jhally believes these videos both inform and misinform our culture about our dominant attitudes regarding femininity masculinity, sexuality and race. He uses an empathetic tone in order to appeal to pathos, the feelings and experiences in women when he presents video clips that are somewhat offensive to watch as proof that women have become a common necessity shown in music videos. Often presented as being sexually aggressive and submissive, being objectified by men. He also intentionally wants to try to stir up emotions as he introduces song lyrics of women being called inappropriate names and images of women being fondled by men throughout the film. Sometimes, aggressively without consent.

Since the explosion of music videos in 1981, a large portion of their popularity has been due to the objectification of women and their sexuality. “Early content analyses showed that anywhere from 40% to 75% of music videos contained sexual imagery”(Arnett, 2002). Hip-hop music videos especially have a reputation of degrading women. In these videos “women are often depicted in positions

In conclusion, the music industry is sexualising older teenage girls to a minor extent. According to the surveys, the older girls don’t feel that they have to display every inch of their body to be considered attractive, and most didn’t see having male attention as an important social standing to have. To the older teens in actuality, music videos are seen as false and a fake depiction of adolescent girls in reality. Lily Allen has made more or an impact on our

Vision and the act of looking is an important and recurring theme in many horror films. In early gothic literature, such as in Guy de Maupassant 's Le Horla, the author presents vision as definitive and universal proof and stresses the importance of seeing as well as the act of showing gore. As a society, we are routinely told ‘seeing is believing ' in the wake of any paranormal or supernatural phenomena, placing weight on the tangible. However, as science and technology have progressed the faithfulness of visual representation is increasingly throw into question, which in turn has led to societal anxiety. A few years earlier, video footage of an event rarely had its validity questions, whereas now it is easy

These differences aren’t biological as some researchers lead us to believe, claiming that men are more sexually stimulated by images, making it natural for women to be gazed at. Bordo argues that our culture determines what if acceptable for “women learn to anticipate, even play to the sexualizing gaze…in the process we learn how sexy being gazed at can feel-perhaps precisely because it walks the fine edge of shame” (135). Yet, with the use of erotic male images and her clearly sexually reaction to them, Bordo pushes readers to question why there are differences in how men and women are viewed and view each other. Who decides what is acceptable?

The Film Dreamworlds III examines the explicit nature and the objectification of women in music videos across music genres. A similar theme is presented throughout these various music videos as women are sexualized and exploited. In addition, many music videos display the domination and antoagonizing nature of a man controlling the numerous women submitting themselves to him. The portrayal of these images in music videos advertise and influence audiences to accept this behavior on screen, which in turn strengthens aggressive masculinity and the pornography of women.

Berger begins by claiming that in nude art the “presence” of a man is that of an actor who asserts his power over women, who are presented as objects. By presence, Berger means how men are authorities over women in these paintings. For example, in the painting, Reclining Bacchante (page 45), the women in the painting is wanting to appear

Allen’s music video introduces half-naked women committing sexual acts in a provocative scene to establish the role of women in pop culture as dehumanizing. The scene starts with Allen joining the female dancers, clothed enough to barely cover their genitals, beginning their dance routine. As Allen sings, the dancers are seen performing the twerk, and the video zooms on the dancer’s genitals as the dancers lick their hands and slap their genitals. Allen’s incendiary scene highlights women as needing to be overly sexualized in music videos and performing suggestive behaviors to be included in pop culture. This scene dehumanizes women in music videos because women are expected to behave and dress in a specific manner or not be included in the

All over history, music has been a critical commitment to people’s lives. Various kinds of music have been created after some time and impact people in unique ways. Of the numerous kinds that have come to frame, hip-hop has turned out to be more prominent inside today's standard pop culture. Alongside the formation of music recordings, hip-hop's popularity has taken off and changed from various perspectives. Inside the music videos of most hip-hop artists, men and women are portrayed in unmistakable and clear ways that may subconsciously influence our perspectives of the standards of today’s society. Hip-hop music videos are so present among the people that these depictions of sexual orientation parts frequently go unrecognized. The complicated

The gaze deals with how the audience views the people presented in visual culture, in this case, adverts, magazines and Cinema. The ‘male gaze’ is the male ability to exercise control over women by representing them in visual means as passive, sexual objects of male desire. The power of men over women has always existed. They are seen as the more powerful and clever species. This control over women has been seen predominately in linguistics senses in past times. It is clear that there are more derogatory terms for women than there are for men. Men can also wolf whistle or cat-call in order to harass a woman but

The development of visual media has introduced the concept of The Male Gaze Theory. The Male Gaze Theory is defined as how women are depicted in the media from a male perspective, such as presenting women as sexual objects for men’s pleasure (Loreck). The article, inexplicitly, talks about the male gaze: “Up to 81% of music videos contain sexual imagery, the majority of which sexually objectifies women by presenting them in revealing clothing, as decorative sexual objects, dancing sexually, or in ways that emphasize body parts or sexual readiness.” The article talks about how women are sexually presented in the media which is what the male gaze encompasses the “male gaze” is a harmful contribution to the sexualization of girls and is also seen throughout the music video. The beginning of the music video shows 50 Cent walking into a brothel-type mansion where the camera pans to focusing on the writhing, half-naked women in the foyer of the mansion. This scene is viewed from a male’s perspective because the camera focuses on their sensual movements and physical assets instead of their normal facial expressions or more appropriate places on their body. Also, since 50 Cent is the only male in the mansion, the camera is only coming from a male perspective because brothels are only truly for a male’s pleasure. The other women in the video are objectified from their revealing clothing

Most popular music today is driven by violence and sex. These musicians put out albums that glorify violence and promote causal sex. When the albums are being produced, the artist does not think of how it will affect the perspective merchant. When

In the early 1990s Laura Mulvey’s thesis concerning the patriarchal structure of an active male gaze has influenced feminist film critiques and Hollywood. Mulvey’s project is to use psychoanalysis to uncover the power of patriarchy in Hollywood cinema. Patriarchal influence upon cinema is found primarily in pleasure (pleasure in looking) or as Freud’s has put it, scopophilia. Mulvey suggests that it may be possible to create a new for of cinema due to the fact that patriarchy power to control cinematic pleasure has revealed.

In music videos the dancing or portrayal of the people within these videos is often of a very sexual driven nature. This re-inforces the idea that women are sexual objects and the purpose of their being is to provide the male population with sexual satisfaction. Women portrayed are very thin and pretty, wearing heavy layers of make-up which portrays the idea that women need materialistic items such as mascara and lipstick