Dr Barry's CSUCI Media Literacy Adventure (COMM/EDUC345): 2017-04-09

In the third iteration Dreamworlds, Sut Jhally critically examines the representation of women, men, and sexuality in music videos. Jhally’s primary argument is that music videos, not unlike other forms of advertising and popular culture, represent the pornographic imagination by offering a degraded and limited view of female sexuality based on narrowly defined adolescent heterosexual male fantasies. Locating the stories and images of music video in a wider context, the film explores how American popular culture, more generally, encourages and excuses men’s violence against women, and argues that we need a wider range of stories about femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. While this video features images of graphic, sexualized violence, it is important to note that the images of music videos are strikingly similar to those seen on the CCTV footage, which suggests that music videos have the ability to, at the very least, contribute to an environment in which violence against women is deemed acceptable.

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Hip-hop came to life in the early to mid-1970s in the Bronx and other urban areas as a movement of cultural expression by and for working class black and Latino youth. It encompasses not only rap music, but also dance, graffiti art, and fashion. In the wake of the demise of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” and the reemergence of conservative domestic policies, America’s inner cities in the latter half of the twentieth century fell victim to deindustrialization, rising unemployment, the withdrawal of governmental social support and, subsequently, increased poverty, crime, and drug abuse. Simultaneously, however, a vibrant and organic youth culture emerged in small nightclubs, public spaces, and private homes. Young urban youth began creating their own music, marked by a strong and unrelenting beat and chanted, rather than sung, rhyming lyrics. Rap thus emerged as a new music genre and a cornerstone of hip–hop culture. While many mainstream critics initially dismissed rap as a novelty and predicted that it would soon fade away, the ensuing decades have proven them very wrong.

Hip-hop has become one of the most vital, and profitable, forces in popular culture. Rap music is now an international art form and is regularly heard in advertising and on radio and television. Furthermore, hip-hop beats have influenced popular music genres from rock to jazz to reggae. The fashions, styles, and attitude of hip-hop have been adopted by America’s commercial culture industries and by youths of all cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. In fact, it is estimated that 60 to 70 percent of mainstream rap music is purchased by whites. Having come a long way from its underground roots, born in poverty and despair, hip-hop is now truly mainstream. Along with this transformation of hip-hop from a marginal to mainstream cultural form, a particular type of rap music has emerged as the recording industry’s most widely produced and promoted subgenre. Sometimes referred to as “gangsta rap,” this style is marked by lyrics and visual images that glorify violence, misogyny, and homophobia, and promote a hunger for the acquisition of flashy and expensive material goods.

In Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, longtime hip-hop fan Byron Hurt takes a step back from the music that he loves to ask difficult questions about how rap music may be shaping our culture, reinforcing racist stereotypes of black men, and promoting harmful ideas about gender and sexuality.

For this week's blog post, watch each (all) of the following videos, then choose one and critically analyze it in terms of the following questions:

What roles do the men in the music video play? What roles do the women play?
Does the music video--as Sut Jhally insists all music videos do--tell a story about male and female sexuality? If so, what story about sexuality does it tell?
What story (besides sexuality) does the visual music video tell? If you had to watch the music video without sound, what story are you told and/or what message does the music video offer?
Does the music video reinforce harmful stereotypes or does it challenge them? Provide examples from the video.
Given that music videos' target audience is adolescents (13-18 years old), what do you think adolescents learn about men, women, and relationships from this music video?

Jason Derulo--"Swalla" (ft. Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign)