With
yesterday's post, I had some videos in mind, but I did a Google search to see
if I was missing anything, and that's how I find Sky Ferreira. I tried to do
the same thing with today's topic, but all the results were for "sexiest
music videos" instead. I am now a little impressed that I did not get any
hits on "raciest music videos" for the previous search.
Searching
on "sexism in music videos" worked a little better, but did not turn
up much, so this will pretty much be about "Blurred Lines",
"Wrecking Ball", and the unholy union of their performers at the
Video Music Awards.
I
don't think I can link to anything. I linked to some awful videos yesterday, and
one really stupid one Monday, but these are just so ugly and degrading and not
even well done.
Like
with the VMAs, I suppose the point of all the teddy bears was to do that thing
where we put symbols of childhood innocence with symbols of sexuality, which
many find titillating, but they were such ugly teddy bears! And I get that all
of the stuff with the foam finger and the tongue and the humping was about sex,
but it was sorely lacking in sexiness. There are valid reasons for not watching
erotic things, but this had nothing to do with that. There are so many problems
with it, I don't even know how to begin. Fortunately, I do have a chance to
compare a bad video with a better video, so that's where I will start.
Cyrus
claimed Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" as part of her
inspiration for "Wrecking Ball". She wanted to have something that
personal and powerful. Both songs are about grief at the loss of a
relationship, so that makes sense.
O'Connor's
video consists mainly of a close-up of her face, dressed in black and singing
against a black background. This conveys mourning, and there is a starkness to
it that is compatible with the expression of emptiness. Cyrus has a similar
close-up, though it is not as harshly focused and the background is white,
which can also be associated with death, and can convey emptiness. Both have
tears at times. So far, that's not really a problem.
O'Connor's
other footage is her walking through Parc de Saint-Cloud in Paris. Every shot seems to
contrast vegetation (like grass or trees), with stone. There is a hardness to
the world, despite its beauty. Everything stays stark.
Cyrus
also has footage of a wrecking ball crashing through walls and reducing them to
rubble. That imagery works with the song, and the sense of being destroyed by
the loss. The footage is not quite as good as the Paris footage, but is
reasonably well done.
So
far the videos are reasonably equivalent and they make their point, but that's
not why people talk about "Wrecking Ball". There is also footage of
Miley barely dressed and licking a sledgehammer, and both barely dressed and
naked riding the wrecking ball, and looking turned on against the rubble.
Oddly,
this undercuts the message. It distracts from the grief, and frankly is a
little weird especially licking the sledgehammer part. Technically that should
be her own instrument of destruction, so if she wielded it against the wrecking
ball, that could be futile attempts to fight it, but instead she tongues it?
I
know they say the nudity is to show how vulnerable she is as she comes clean about
this breakup, but also it seems to me that the breakup was only official at the
time of the release. Maybe the relationship was emotionally over, but if you
are able to maintain the public semblance of the relationship until the ideal
announcement time from a PR angle, I suspect you may not be completely
destroyed. Perhaps I am too cynical.
The
way the nudity is shot, the video can still be shown on television, but I could
not help but think that director Terry Richardson got to see it all. I don't
think that it's a coincidence that the man who executed this concept has a
reputation for inappropriate sexual behavior, of leaving his models feeling
uncomfortable and dirty, or actually being abused.
There
is something else that strikes me about Cyrus, though, as she cuts short and bleaches
her gorgeous hair, sticks out her tongue instead of boring smiling, and puts on
clothes that are revealing but not pretty, that maybe she is not just rebelling
against her former Disney image. Maybe she is rebelling against a world where
she is supposed to be ornamental, and sexually available enough to not be icy,
but not so much as to be slutty, and where you actually can't win. She just may
need some coaching on how to rebel effectively, rather than being filmed by
Terry Richardson and grinding on the singer of "Blurred Lines".
"Blurred
Lines" is not a particularly well-done video. There doesn't seem to be any
attempt to put the choreography with the tune, props are pretty random, and sometimes
there is a jittery effect that doesn't seem to serve any purpose. Basically, it
is clothed men ogling naked women who enjoy the attention. In that sense, it
does serve the song perfectly.
I
know people have given different interpretations of the song; I have a friend
who thinks it's about someone hitting on a married woman. It is certainly true
that there is a double standard in place where there is a stigma on women for
having sex that men do not face, and that is unfair. If you don't believe in
chastity for anyone, then encouraging women to play around just as much as men
sounds reasonable. So I get that, but I can't help but think that a song going
along those lines might be more likely to ask "Do you want it?" rather
than outright declaring "I know you want it."
Sure,
liberating sounds better than domesticating, but both the singer and the
previous guy are taking the view that she is an animal; why isn't it that
"We're both animals?" That imbalance is reinforced by the clothing in
the video, where the men are fully dressed and the women are naked, even though
presumably if they were going to have sex, both sides would undress.
It
has been rightly pointed out that "I know you want it" is the
language of rapists, and putting those together, other red flags pop up. There
are hints at violence, and echoes of things Pick Up Artists say. There is a
reference to drugs, as a way of loosening resistance. I've got someone else,
but she is not as bad as you, so let's do this, and multiple times calling the
subject of the song "bitch". And it's never asking a question; why
would she get a say?
Another
Google search I had done recently was sexualized images in advertising, which I
looked up after reading a chapter about advertising, and the descriptions
sounded really bad. Looking at actual images, yes, those descriptions were
accurate, but I had never thought of it like that because that kind of imagery
is so prevalent, and it is all women. The only male images that came up were
some salad dressing ads that had made everyone uncomfortable, but when a woman
is reduced to her body, or parts of her body, we're used to that.
Again,
I will be spending more time on sexism and beauty and objectification later;
this blogging segment is about music videos. I maintain that what we watch and
what we propagate matters, and maybe it's more timely after last weekend.
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