Critical
Investigation Notes & Quotes
Primary Media Texts
Secondary Media Texts
Miley
Cyrus
“Doing
this video was really an eye opening experience. I knew it was going to be
pushing the envelope in certain areas, but because of the fact that we were
flipping the roles. It was a real role reversal for men and women. For years
we’ve been watching on MTV and all these videos of all these rappers and
R&B singers and even pop singers have all of these girls all over the place
for no reason half naked shooting and washing cars and doing all this. To do
this today was really funny because, as we were shooting it, it was all of the
men on the crew and director and everybody; they were so uncomfortable seeing
the guys do it. It was like we couldn’t get out of there fast enough; oh that’s
one take, we got it, we got it, we got it. Meanwhile we’ve been watching this
for years. If this was a girl doing that, they would be like; can we get it
from this angle, could you rub your breast on the car just a little bit longer.
It was like we have been watching this for years; you know what, its girl
time.”
Other:
Book
Gender,
Branding and the modern music industry
Kristin
J.Lieb
Published-
Routledge 2013
ISBN-
978-0-415-89489-0
Pages
88-91, 114, 118, 119
Music
Video and the Politics of Representation
Diane
Railton, Paul Watson 2011
ISBN-
978 0 7486 3323 4
Pages
18-21
Although
sexual objectification is commonplace in media culture, music videos provide
the most potent examples of it. In the current study, we developed a coding
system to measure sexual objectification and its correlates in music videos.
Our analysis compared sexual objectification across artists' gender and musical
genres (R&B/hip-hop, pop, and country). Compared to male artists, female artists were more
sexually objectified, held to stricter appearance standards, and more likely to
demonstrate sexually alluring behaviour. In addition, sexual objectification
was more prominent in R&B/hip-hop and pop videos than in country videos. The
results are discussed in light of objectification theory and sexual agency.
Page:
254, 256
“Various
content analysis have shown that from the 1940s to the present, between 70% to
90% of popular songs have contained themes related to sexuality.”
“The
proportion of music videos with sexual imagery varies by genre, from
about 50% of pop and rap videos to just 8% of heavy metal videos (Tapper,
Thorson, & Black, 1994)
“One
analysis of 1,000 music video characters found that males are more often
depicted as adventurous, aggressive and dominant: females, in contrast, are
more often depicted as affectionate, fearful, and nurturing. Another analysis,
comparing videos in diiferent musical genres, found that rap videos were
especially likely to be sexiest, females depicted as sexual objects (Utterbach,
liungdahl storm. Williams. & Kreutter. 1995)”
Mass Communication and Society
Publisher: Routledge
Page 70 “For example, teens with
highly sexual ‘‘media diets’’ perceived more sexual encouragement from those
media messages and were more likely to intend to engage in sexual
intercourse
than teens with low sexual content in their media diets (Brown & Newcomer,
1991).”
Page 70 “In addition, survey results indicated that
participants’ identification with same-sex popular television characters
significantly associated with greater support of women as sex objects and with
greater sexual experience. Peter and Valkenburg (2007) demonstrated that the
degree of media’s sexual explicitness informs the relationship between exposure
to a sexualized media environment and notions of women as sex objects.
Specifically, as the media environment became more sexual (ranging from
non-explicit fashion magazines, through semi explicit television, up to
explicit XXX Internet pornography), the less explicit forms of sexual media
ceased to significantly contribute to their model.”
Page 71 “30% of the men in the misogynous rap
condition chose to show the sexually violent vignette to a female confederate,
as compared to only 7% in the neutral condition, suggesting that exposure to
misogynous rap facilitates sexually aggressive cognition and behaviour. It
seems reasonable, then, to conjecture that sexually themed music videos might
have similar effects regarding sexual aggression. Kalof (1999) examined this
very phenomenon and found that female undergraduates exposed to a sexually
stereotyped music video indicated greater acceptance of interpersonal violence
(i.e., violence within relationships) than those exposed to a neutral music
video.”
Page 82 “In response to the growing concern that
hip-hop music and music videos may foster permissive sexual attitudes and
distorted sexual norms (Barongan & Nagayama Hall, 1995; Gan et al., 1997;
Lackley & Moberg, 1998; Ward et al., 2005), the current study investigated
the potential effects of sexual imagery in hip-hop music videos on college
students’ objectification of women, sexual permissiveness, gender attitudes,
and acceptance of rape myths. It was found that the effects of sexual imagery
in hip-hop videos were mainly detected among the male participants. As
anticipated, those who watched the highly sexual hip-hop videos expressed the
higher levels of objectification of women, stereotyped gender attitudes, and
acceptance of rape myths.”
Page 83 “Men in the highly sexual hip-hop videos were
portrayed as powerful, sexually assertive, and as having a fair degree of
sexual prowess, whereas the women were portrayed as sexually available,
scantily clad, and often preening over the men. This might have served as a cue
to male participants that sexual coercion is more acceptable and that women
exist for the entertainment and sexual fulfilment of men.”
Nina Power (2009) One
Dimensional Woman
(O Books: Winchester and
Washington)?
·
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Internet Links
“The
report, Pornographic Performances, gathered academic research on sexism and
racism in music videos, and found that women – especially black women – were
routinely portrayed in a hyper-sexualised fashion.”
“The
report found that videos portray men as the characters with “power and
dominance, and women as passive recipients of their ‘gaze’. Black women, in
particular, are “commonly portrayed as hypersexual and with a focus and
fascinated gaze on their bottoms, invoking ideas of black women as wild and
animalistic”. Those who have watched these videos in a controlled setting are
more likely to “endorse the ‘sexual double standard’ which sees men who have
many sexual partners as admirable and women who do so as ‘sluts’”
“One
study found viewers were more likely to make excuses for perpetrators of
“acquaintance rape”.
“Women are
objectified in music videos, especially in hip hop and rap; from sexy dressing,
speaking in seductive tones to acting and dancing in a sexual manner. The
perfect portrayal of women as sex objects.”
“Sometimes in
music videos, the woman’s face is not shown. Instead, her body becomes a
showpiece and is put on display. It depicts her as not having an identity or a
sense of individualism thus, reinforcing her role as a sex symbol.”
“Women’s
bodies are often dismembered and treated as separate parts, perpetuating the
concept that a woman’s body is not connected to her mind and emotions,” states
the sociologist, Erving Goffman in his book, Gender Advertisements.”
Media magazine:
Issue 34:
Topic: Engendering Change: What’s Happened to Representations of Women?
“Men
act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at
“
Berger
1972
“One of these, Nina Power’s book One Dimensional
Woman, begins thus: Where have all the interesting women gone? If the
contemporary portrayal of womankind were to be believed, contemporary female
achievement would culminate in the ownership of expensive handbags, a vibrator,
a job, a flat and a man – probably in that order.”
Power
2009: 1
“The
ideologies of male dominance and patriarchal values have not diminished; and
the belief that they have offers a classic example of ‘hegemony’: a state where
the oppressed consent to, and accept, their situation because they are not
conscious of being exploited. We, both female and male, are socialised into a
world where the relationships of power between the sexes appear ‘natural’, and
so few question the inequality.”
