Christina Aguilera, Lil Kim, Pink and Mya- Lady Maralade
This video represents women in my sexualized fashion.

Ludacris- Whats your Fantasy
This song represents the male as the dominant figure and the female as the submissive sex object in its lyrics but also in the video. In the video features males mostly fully clothed and the women skimply dress and shown to be dancing around the men in the video.

Shakira ft Rihanna- Cant Remember To Forget you.
This song an example of females using their sexuality to provoke male fantasy. This video also features an element of gender bending, with Shakira and Rihanna lying on a bed together and the nude-esque shot at 2:46.

Nicki Manaj ft Cassie- The Boys
Similar to that in Cant Remember to Forget You, both Nicki and Cassie ‘play with Queerness’ in this video by dancing provocatively with one another. This song is also an example of a female singer signing about women from the male perspective.

3OH!3- DONT TRUST ME
In this video 3OH!3, (in the beginning of the video), attempt to make fun of how males assert their dominance on women in music videos. With a scene showing the member of the band in underwear and a bath robe, with half-dressed women in the background. This scene is alternated throughout the song, changing from the members wear a shirt and tie to underwear. I found this scene interesting because, I feel like they ended up sexualising themselves.

In this blog I will be discussing the role on gender in music.
The music industry is dominated my males. The male role music to so assert their masculinity and dominance. The role of women in music is to play into the masculinity and dominance of males. Women are often objectified and hyper-sexualised for entertainment.
In rap/hip-hop music, men are portrayed as dominant, hyper-mascline and violent, while women play the submissive role. The women in these video are hyper-sexualised wearing hardly any clothes and are there to be objectified.
In Kayne West and Jamie Foxx’s video for Gold Digger, the women in this video are depicted as sex objects. The song starts of showing a fully clothed Jamie Foxx and then a skimply dressed women dancing seductively. Kayne and Jamie show their dominance in the video by staying fully clothed. Later in the video these women are shown dancing around Kanye wear lingerie, the dancing is sexualized, re-enforcing the idea that women are their as objects of sex.

Females are sexualized in an unrealistic fashion. This is giving youth a false representation of how women should act in society and in relationships. An even more disturbing trend is currently occurring that involves the over sexualisation of     things that children would be attracted too. These things include toys and teddy bears, one such example of this would be Miley Cyrus’s video for We Can’t Stop, as is has teddy bears strapped to the back of Cyrus and her dancers. The use of bright and pastel colors in sexualized videos. These colours are so often associated with children and they are the colours that children will be most drawn too. The use of these colours in these videos are pulling in a younger audience and could lead to influencing these children to thinking that they have to act in whatever way their gender is represented. Nicki Manaj’s video for SuperBass. The video would be attractive to a child because it is full of bright colours. But the video has a hypersexualised theme that runs throughout. Manaj plays a submissive role to the dominant  male when she dances around a man who later has no top on, with Manaj touching his bare chest. Later in the video Manaj shows that she is there to be treated as an object as an object of sex, as she is shown to seductively pour pink stuff over her chest.

The sexualization of a doll-like image of females in the music industry is creating a unrealistic image that young girls are aspiring too. I feel that Nicki Manaj is representing this doll-like Barbie image. This can be clearly seen the her video for Right By My Side. Manaj is shown with lighter skin, bleach blonde hair and pale pink lipstick. Manaj displays females submissive role to men when she dances around Chris Brown.

Is the roles of gender that are being portrayed in today’s music videos corrupting the minds of youth?  Is it influencing the why in which people in society are treated?
I feel that some people are more impressionable to the things that they watch than others because everyone interpretes things differently. However I do feel that if children are exposed to this over sexualized material at too young of an age, that their actions towards people and how that they represent themselves as a male or female, will be severely altered.

In my last blog I spoke about racism in popular music, in this blog i will be speaking about cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is the borrowing of certain elements of another culture, these can include dress, music, religious symbols and language. There seems to be a fine line between racism and cultural appropriation, with some debating if cultural appropriation is just a new angle of racism.

Katy Perry’s video for Dark Horse, is appropriating different cultures, in a mis-informed manner. The song is centred arround Egyptian mythology. The video shows perry dressed as an Egyptian god. In the opening of the video we see Perry in a river boat, that is being rowed by a man with blue coloured skin. Colours in Egyptian mythology are if great importance and each colour represents a different trait. To have blue coloured skin in Egyptian mythology, represented Amun, the god of air, sun and sky. Later in the video Perry is seen to be dancing with a group of men, all you whose skin is blue. Also in this video Katy Perry is seen to be appropriating Muslim culture, with the feature of a Alah pendant. The pendant caused great offence amongst many Muslim communities. This sparked a huge online campaign calling for the video in its entirety. Since the Allah pendant has been removed forum the video.

Petition : http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/youtube-to-remove-katy-perry-s-dark-horse-video-depicting-name-of-god-allah-youtube-to-remove-katy-perry-s-video-dark-horse-from-their-website

Gwen Stefani’s album Love Angel Music Baby album seen her appropriate Japanese culture in music videos and photoshots. Stefani recruited a group of Japanese women and call them her Harajuku Girls, after her love of the Harajuku culture she encountered in Toyko. The Harajuku Girls featured in music videos and promotional appearances and performances for the album.
Music videos featuring the girls show them following Stefani around and dancing.

Gwen even went as far as to release a perfume line called Harajuku Lovers. The bottles of the five different perfumes are of a Harajuku Girl. This added further to the appropriation of Japanese and Harajuku culture.

Gwen Stefani was under fire about the appropriation of Indian culture in No Doubt’s  video for the single looking Hot. The video had strong imagery of native american culture and showed Stefani in Indian headdress and traditional Indian dress. The way in which this culture was portrayed in the video was as if it were something you would see everyday. The video has been removed from the bands official youtube and other accounts, and the band issued an apology on their website.
During No Doubt’s performances through the 90’s Stefani often were a bindi, a type of forehead art worn by Indian women.

Iggy Azalea’s video for Bounce appropriates Indian Culture. Neither the lyrics of the song or Iggy herself have any links with Indian culture. The introduction to the video shows a montage of an urban life in India. the video continues to show Iggy riding an elephant through the urban streets. Iggy wear traditional Indian dress, a sari and headwear a bindi. The video appropriates Indian culture through all these different elements including the traditional Indian dance.

Culture appropriation seems to be theme in a lot of popular music videos today, but it by no means is it a recent phenomenon. Madonna’s video for vogue was labeled as appropriating voguing the dance of gay black men.

Falling In Reverse- Bad Girls Club
This video appropriates Japanese culture. at the start of the video the song is introduced with Japanese-esque style, aswell as the culture being further appropriated with the featuring of Japanese umbrellas. The way in which the women are portrayed in this video could be considered to particularly racist, with the cartoon portrayal and the hypersexualised portrayal of Asian women.
Not only is Japanese culture being appropriated in this video but also Metal culture with the stacks of amps.

Gwen Stefani- The Sweet Escape
Most of Gwen Stefani’s videos from her solo career in the 00’s, appropriated the Japanese Harajuku culture. The video show her ‘possy’ of Harajuku girls acting as her dancers and video extras. Whenever Gwen is shown in the same shot as the girls, Gwen is always the main focus. It appears to me as if the girls are there for decoration.

Katy Perry- Dark Horse
I mentioned this song in the blog on Cultural Appropriation. The video appropriates Egyptian culture/Mythology. The culture is appropriated to an extreme to where is may cause offence.

No Doubt Dont Speak.
Gwen Stefani appropriates Indian culture by wearing a Bindi ( Indian Forehead art).

Madonna-Vogue
Madonna appropriated Black and Gay culture with her hit Vogue. Vogue is a type of dance that emerged from Harlem ballrooms by the black gay scene.

Paul McCartney nd Stevie Wonder Ebony and Ivory.
This song is about  racism equality

Major Lazer- Bubble Butt.
This song represents black women in a hyper sexualized and animatistic fashion. This representation that black women are promiscuous can be construed as racist.

Depeche Mode- People are People
The song lyrics have a theme  of equality. And a message that we are all the same so why judge people how maybe different to us. “People are people so why should it be,You and I should get along so awfully ,So we’re different colours, And we’re different creeds”

Day Above Ground- Asian Girlz.
According to some online bloggers this song is the most racist in history. This song outranged people across the world, with its racist slurs and hypersexualized lyrics of Asian Women. “I love your creamy yellow thighs / Ooh your slanted eyes,” and “it’s the Year of the Dragon / Ninja pussy I’m stabbin’.”

Lily Allan Hard Out There.
As I mentioned in my blog about racism, Allan’s attempt at making fun of modern-day pop music videos back fired. The video features black dancers, how are dancing in a hypersexualised fashion, similar to the Bubble Butt video, but much more tame. Despite the song having a somewhat of a positive message towards women, the imagery in the video does not portray the same message.

 

Racism has always been an ever-present feature in popular music. Racism in music is not always obvious and is mostly a hidden, but in recent times especially in music videos racism is becoming more obvious.

Racism can feature in many different ways, songs can be written about the awareness of racism often written by artists who have been the victim of racial discrimination. Racism in music more often than not, featured in a negative way. This can be done with song lyrics (black racism and white racism), and in music videos, with depicting different cultures and gender within the culture.

There is copious amounts of racism in rap/hip-hop music. In rap/hip-hop song lyrics and music videos black people are used to “authenticate”  scenes of crime, lower class and black women are often shown to be promiscuous. These are all black stereotypes and ones that are considered to be offensive.

When rapper LL Cool J and country signer Brad Paisley joined forces and wrote a song together in an attempt to bridge a gap between hip-hop and country music, the result was shockingly racist. The most shocking line of all “if you don’t judge my gold chains I’ll forget the iron chains”.

Whilst some artists are blatantly racist, others choose to highlight the issue and promote equality. One such example of this is Micheal Jackson’s song Black or White. The song was written with lyrics about quality amongst all ethnicities.

“And I told about equality and it’s true
Either you’re wrong or you’re right
But, if you’re thinkin’ about my baby
It don’t matter if you’re black or white”

Another song written about racism equality is Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney’s Ebony and Ivory.

Lily Allan’s song Hard Out There, caused a bit of a stir upon its release as it the video was labeled as being racist. The video was made to be somewhat of a parody of the music videos of today. But the plan to poke fun at music videos from artists such as Nicki Manaj and Miley Cyrus backfired, with Allan taking a lot of heat. The video has skimpily dressed black and asian dancers. These dancers are playing up to the racist stereotype that black women are promiscuous.

My Chemical Romance Helena.
My Chemical Romance are said to be part of the so-called Emo culture. With songs glamourising suicide and the afterlife. In this video death be being represented, in both the funeral themed video and the style of make up. In my eyes the pale make up symbolizes being dead, further galmourising the theme.

Hawthorne Heights Ohio is for Lovers.
I mentioned this in my blog for Deviance and Moral Panic Music. Like My Chemical Romance, Hawthorne Heights have been labeled as an “Emo” band, who promote suicide and self-harming in the song lyrics to Ohio is for Lovers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUO-sRLotOI

Miley Cyrus Live Teen Choice performance of Party in the USA.
This was one of the first performances that outraged parents around the world, creating the first moral panic involving Cyrus. The performance shows  the (then16 year-old),Disney star dancing with a pole.

Nicki Minaj ft 2 Chainz- Beez In The Trap.
In this song Rapper 2 Chainz refernces the drug “Molly”. The most recent moral panics to be associated with society and music is the use and promotion of this drug.
“Got your girl on molly we smokin’ loud and drinking”.

Deviance is said to be a social construct, which comes about if the rules socially accepted behaviour are broken. Deviance in turn can cause a moral panic, as a deviance may threaten modern-day society. Music, deviance and moral panics seem to go hand in hand. But can deviance in music be  contributing to the social behaviour and misconduct by youths ?

I am briefly going to look at a some examples of deviance and moral panics in music. The Punk Movement in Britain. The Punk movement in Britain in the 1970’s, seen the rise of deviant behaviour amongst youths.Punk music had song lyrics centred around the theme of rebellion. The Punk subculture isolated themselves from ‘normal’ society by dressing different e.g spiked hair, pvc clothing and piercings. The Punk subculture caused a moral panic back in the 70’s.  Society seen punks as trouble makers, and people who started riots. The media at this time played a big role in how the public preserved this new sub-culture. The media labeled it as dangerous. Punks were open about their experimentation with drugs and sexuality, with also contributed to the moral panic as it was seen to threaten how society functioned.

Emo Music and Self-Harming. With the emergence of the ‘Emo’ subculture brought around another moral panic, much like the moral panic that surrounded the punk. Bands such as My Chemical Romance and Hawthorne Heights were labeled as emo because of their lyrics idealise and glamorize self-harm, suicide and immoratlity.Harthrone Height’s song Ohio is For Lovers, lyrics promoting self harm in emo culture:

So cut my wrists and black my eyes. So I can fall asleep tonight, or die. Because you kill me. You know you do, you kill me well. You like it too, and I can tell. You never stop until my final breath is gone.

The style of an emo would be, all black clothes with a possibility of a splash of colour and the trademark haircut, the long sweeping side fringe that usually covers one eye. The media sparked the moral panic amongst parents. The Daily Mail ran an article with the title ‘EMO CULT warning for Parents’. This article raised fears of parents this article and others alike targeted My Chemical Romance and blamed them for teenage suicides across Britain.

Miley Cyrus. Long before her antics at the VMA’s Cyrus created quite the stir with her performance of Part in the USA at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards. At the age of 16, the Disney superstar manged to incorporate some mild pole dancing to her performance in front of many teenager at the award ceremony. This created a moral panic at the time amongst parents across the world, who were fearing  their children would be exposed to this sexualized performance. Last year at the VMA’s Cyrus regenerated this moral panic with her performance of ‘Can’t Stop’. As im sure you all know the performance featured tweaking and some dodgy placements of a foam finger. Molly(drug). Another moral panic currently sweeping the world around use of the drug Molly. Molly or MDMA is used in the production of ecstasy, but unlike ecstasy molly can be laced with harmful chemicals. Several artists in pop music are referencing the drug in song lyrics. Miley Cyrus references the drug in two different songs first in We Can’t Stop with the line “Dancing with Molly” and Will.I.am’s song Feelin Myself  with the line “Now everybody trippin’ like they poppin’ molly”.
Musicians have been noted to be regular user of the drug, with Disney Star Selena Gomez doing a stint in rehab, reportedly for use of the drug.

Van Morrison Cleaning Windows.
As I mentioned in my Irish Working Class Blog how this song is an example of working class culture in Irish music.

Green Day-Working Class Hero
Originally sang by John Lennon, the song celebrates being working class. The song sings from the perspective of a working class person.

Andy Irvine Gladiators
In this song Andy Irvine, sings about working class culture during the time of World War One in the verses and in the choruses the lyrics turn to celebrating the working class with lyrics such as “Gladiators of the Working Class, heroes of mine
Who travelled down this dark road long before my time”.

Jinx Lennon Get the Guards
Jinx Lennon sings of scenarios typically encountered by people of working class backgrounds.

 

 

The notion of working class was first introduced during the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution came to Ireland in the early 19th century and with it an irish working class culture developed. The opening of factory’s, came the prospect of work. The first working class people of Ireland were former peasants who took up work in these newly opened factory’s. With the work force of these factory’s ever-growing, the working class had more disposable income and the desire for entertainment when they weren’t working. This lead the mixing of social classes and dances and cinemas. Because of this, it can be said that the people of the working class culture led to the break down of cultural norms of their time, such as inter-class relationships.

Working class culture is often depicted in media, such as television, music videos and songs. Cultural subgroups are often associated with being working class, e.g punks ans skinheads. In Ireland many see the term working class as derogatory as they see it having close ties with the Irish traveling community, whilst others embrace the term.

In more modern times Irish working class has been depicted in such irish television programs such as Fair City. These types of programs try to appeal to the culture by creating storylines similar to ones faced by the working class on a day-to-day basis.

Irish music has a long history with working class people. It can only assumed that the people who worked in the factory’s back in the 19th century, sang work songs to pass the time, like many of the workers did across the world. These work songs would have been passed on from mouth to mouth and have been lost time.

Irish musician,Van Morrison grew up in a working class family in Belfast, with his father working as an electrician the shipyards. Morrison references his own experience being working class in his song ‘Cleaning Windows’. The song was inspired by a job he had cleaning windows and describes a day on the job.

Oh, the smell of the bakery from across the street
Got in my nose
As we carried our ladders down the street
With the wrought-iron gate rows
I went home and listened to Jimmie Rodgers in my lunch-break
Bought five Woodbines at the shop on the corner
And went straight back to work. 

What’s my line? I’m happy cleaning windows
Take my time I’ll see you when my love grows
Baby don’t let it slide I’m a working man in my prime
Cleaning windows (number a hundred and thirty-six) 

Irish Folk giants The Dubliners song ‘Working Man’ strongly references working class culture. The song is about a man who is working in the mines.

It’s a working man I am and I’ve been down underground
And I swear to God if I ever see the sun Over any length of time,
I can hold it in my mind I never again will go down underground

At the age of sixteen years,
he quarreled with his peers
And he swears there will never be another on
In the dark recess of the mine,
where you age before your time
And the coal dust lies heavy on your lungs

A contemporary example of working class in music is from Irish musician Damian Dempsey. Dempsey grew up in a working class family in Donaghmede, Dublin. Both parents worked. Dempsey was musically influenced my working class artists from Ireland and around the world, such as The Dubliners, The Pogue’s and Bob Marley. Hailed by the people of Ireland as a Working Class hero.  His song  ‘seize the Day’  contains  lyrics that could be related to Ireland’s working class culture.

With Van Morrison’s, Luke Kelly’s (The Dubliners), and Damian Dempsey all coming from working class families and areas in Ireland,  makes their music more authentic and appealing to the listener.