The Effects Of Music Videos On The World Of Commercial Realism

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.

Robin Thicke’s music video to his song “Blurred Lines” avidly contributes to the patriarchy, while portraying sexism, gender standards, and beauty standards. His music video can be analyzed from a feminist theory approach, as it’s evident that his song and video contribute to a patriarchal society and its inherently sexist and sexualized ideologies. The ideology behind the song and music video is purely sexual and about male dominance. The lyrics to the song and actions in the video exhibit extreme over sexualization and objectification of the women. Analyzing this piece of popular culture through a feminist approach opens up a provoking conversation about how popular culture functions in a patriarchal culture. Analyzing pop culture though a feminist theory can allow for a larger variety and more in-depth analysis about the social aspects and political agenda within popular culture.

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 her article “The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto: Negotiating Spaces for Women,” Imani Perry argues that the objectification of women in the music industry is normalized in our society. Her purpose is to persuade us that most feminists who fight against the objectification and exploitation of women are ultimately colonized by the sexual fantasies of men. As a law professor at Rutgers Law School, Perry structures her text in a very effective manner. Using a general-to-specific organization scheme, she begins by outlining the recurring image of sexualized women in music videos, then presenting various cases of prominent feminist figures in the music industry.

In most commercial advertisements on television, women show more skin than men. Commercials use women to sell sex because it attracts more attention than men showing their bodies. For instance, Britney Spears, a singer whom many teenagers admire, appeared in a music commercial for Z100, the number one radio station in New York. Z100 promotes commercially hot music in modes such as pop, rock, and R&B. In Z100’s new commercial, Britney Spears is wearing a beige outfit consisting of a tight tube top and small shorts that accent her chest and buttocks. After talking for a moment, she starts dancing with her back facing the camera. Viewers are visually drawn to the shape of her body. As spokesperson for Z100, Britney Spears is being used as a marketing tool to attract men and increase ratings. Z100 could have had a popular male in its commercial. Instead the company’s executives chose a popular woman known for her hourglass figure because men prefer to look at young, shapely, nubile women.

This proves that half the demographics do not see the importance of sexual attraction or making themselves centre of attention while with the opposite sex. The girls that I surveyed were older teenagers between the ages of seventeen and eighteen, and these people were all for Lily Allen’s campaign for slamming the sexualised music videos. This shows that the older girls realise, the ideology of being ‘perfect’ does not exist, and these women shown in these videos are not ‘realistic”.

The sexualisation of women in advertising has become a very prominent and controversial issue in today’s society. Many brands, products and campaigns we are presented with portray women as being available and willing sexual objects, who exist to cater to the male gender. Gucci is one such brand that does this, focusing on emphasizing the sexual appeal of the female gender in order to sell their products, because as advertisers know: ‘sex sells.’ This new cultural shift can however, be seen as politically regressive for women, as the ideology it brings negatively impacts how women are viewed by society and how they view themselves.

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.

This song displays the traditional messages sent by male artists. What about female artists? What do their songs portray? Andsager and Roe’s findings give a good description. According to them, there are two kinds of female artists. The strong, more established female artists portray women as “fully equal.” These women are in their thirties at least, they are more established, and they dress in casual suits. They sang romance, female emancipation, and heartbreak like the rest, but they did not compromise their image in their videos. They use Trisha Yearwood as an example in her song Everybody Knows. The other type, were women who “fell into the lowest level on the consciousness scale.” They used Deana Carter’s song We Danced Anyway as an example. In this song she rolled on the beach in a wet t-shirt. Another one is Faith Hill’s song Breathe. In this song, Hill is seen rolling around in her bed sheets with no clothes on.

The purpose of the essay, “From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos,” by Joan Morgan, is to not just address the issue of sexism in hip-hop, but to understand and dissect it. Jean Kilbourne’s major claim in “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt” is that advertising has gained a spot where bodies are depicted as objects thereby normalizing attitudes that contribute to sexual aggression. Both these authors use rhetorical strategies effectively such as ethos, pathos, and logos as well as using key language and tone to target their specific audiences.

In the music videos, I saw women being mistreated. I can’t knock someone’s hustle but I don’t think artists need to take their videos to the extreme. I didn’t feel like Biggie, Tupac, and Cash Money [popular artists in the early 90s] were as fixated on the women. They were more about showing off their money and cars, and clothes. (Roberts-Douglass & Curtis-Boles, 2012, p. 10)

Within popular culture today, objectified female bodies can be represented everywhere from advertising images to magazine covers, television, music and many more. Through these media institutions, we allow them to construct social identities in ways that allow us to understand what it means to be black, white, Asian, male or female etc. Within many popular culture mediums such as music, stereotypical representations of racially marked female bodies are often formed. Thus, these representations also have the ability to create stories about a certain culture. In music videos, it does not go unnoticed that women are portrayed as objects whose objectives are to pleasure men. In this paper, I will argue how racially marked female bodies are represented. This paper will mainly focus on how these racially marked women are depicted in the hip hop culture. To demonstrate this, I will draw examples by using award winning music videos by Nicki Minaj, R.Kelly, 50 cent to exemplify representations of the female body and how they are objectified as sex objects. In conclusion, we will be able to see how the female bodies are used in mainstream hip hop videos to convey seductively.

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

(Weisstuch). The underlying message is that women live exclusively for the sexual gratification of men based on male power, privilege and preference. These images serve as a grim reminder that women are being exploited as sexual objects through rap videos. Therefore, the objectification of women through the means of rap music is a major influence in the exploitation of women.

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