Essay/Bibliography/Evaluation

To what extent does the representation of women in contemporary R ‘n’ B music videos present stereotypical dominate views of female sexuality?

Modern day R ‘n’ B is the best evidence of the strength of the “Sex Sell” motif, and the willingness of people to conform to anything that appears to rebel against former generations’ ideas and beliefs in regard to morals (Urban Dictionary, 2004) – including sex, drugs and attitudes towards women, men and money. According to modern day R ‘n’ B music videos, all that really matters about women is their sexuality (Derrick Daye, 2008); they are represented as being nothing more than a sexual object. The lyrics heard and the narrative or the general direct can evidence this, along with the camera angles, the mise-en-scene, shots used, pace and style of editing – including props, costumes, hair and make-up, location setting and colours used. I analysed three music videos; two show a negative representation of women, and have very similar outlooks on female objectification (Tip Drill by Nelly and Lapdance by N.E.R.D), the third shows a more positive representation of women (Survivor by Destiny’s Child), however still possesses some negative aspects.

R ‘n’ B music videos portray women’s identities to be based on how desirable they are to men (Yousman et al. 2007:15), however the music video and song by Destiny’s Child – Survivor, to an extent turns this idea upside down. Narratively the three women are on a deserted island, and have to find a way to survive, and these images and idea support the lyrics – all about female empowerment and surviving on their own without men. With all this said the video still has a hyper sexualisation of women to it. The costumes that the three ladies wear are the most obvious sexual element – low cut, short dresses all revealing stomach, and cling to the body. Even though they are “doing things on [there] own terms, [they] are very much objectified and exist for the male viewer”(Miss Representation 2012). They are still portrayed in a sexual manor trying to lure and appeal the male audience by being inadequately clothed, move in a seductive manner, being in seductive positions (such as on their hands and knees, with dipped backs which enhance their rears and breast) and frequently seen wet. And as “water is frequently used as an erotic element just as in standard heterosexual fantasy images” (Yousman et al. 2007:9) the sexual element of the women is enhanced further. E. Ann Kaplan, 1987, suggests the “postmodern feminist heroine” can be defined by the combination of “unabashed seductiveness with a gusty kind of independence”. To begin with in the Survivor video, them being in water can be explained as it helps to show how they have become stranded on the island, however as the video moves on, the women find dry clothes (that are even more revealing than before – tighter, and less of it) but still insist on re-entering water. This both brings the element of sexual desire to the video and sacrifices the logic of the narrative for visual pleasure, but also helps emphasis the survival element of the video, by showing them having made spires and hunting for fish.

Being that music videos are a form of advertising for the recording industry (Yousman et al. 2007: 5) they need to draw in a large and varied audience to increase sales. To do this in the music industry a highly sexual aspect is require because “it is harder to get men to watch television” (Miss Representation 2012) and as “sex evokes a hardwired emotional response that is linked to the species survival” (Reichert, 2007: 16) the “exploitation of women’s bodies sells product” (Miss Representation 2012) – Sex Sells. The song survivor is mainly aimed at women, and female independence; this subject on its own is not a lure for a male audience and so therefore limits the number of sales/views.  Considering the male audience all of these sexual elements and displays of male fantasy are vital, as they help to increase the sells and views of the video and song broadening the target audience. Without these elements or the added male attention it can be argued that the songs success would have been decreased.

With the idea of advertising in mind a sexual and demining viewpoint of women (portrayed by the over exaggerated wealth, power and status that the men in three of the videos I have analysed (Tip Drill, Windowlicker and Lapdance), are shown to have) can simply be seen as a ploy to attract a larger target audience. The music video by Nelly called Tip Drill received a lot of negative attention from many feminists. Asha Jennings, student president from Spelman College said  “[the college] can't continue to support artists and images that exploit our women and put us out there as oversexed, non-intelligent human beings." (Redeye, 2004). Although the attention was negative this sparked peoples interest into why the video was so highly viewed as derogative. This added publicity and interest would have fundamentally increased the number of views and hits that the video received.

This idea of advertising can also be said for the Survivor music video. The song and meaning behind the lyrics initially appeal to women, encouraging their independence from men – the lyrics “Now that you're out of my life/ I'm so much better/ You thought that I'd be weak without you/ But I'm stronger” support this idea. However by the video having a sexual aspect to it, presenting the women as sexual and still beautiful (wearing revealing clothes and having perfect make-up and hair) having just been stranded on a deserted island.

Additionally the same technique of “Sex Sells” can also be applied to N.E.R.D’s song Lapdance. When listening to and reviewing the lyrics of N.E.R.D – Lapdance I realised that the song was talking about the government “While the government is soundin' like strippers to me” and the effect of society on their behaviour, “It's this society/ That makes a nigga wanna kill”. To me the song makes a very good political statement about deprived Americans. Why then are sexual ideas, references and visuals used? As mentioned previously, sexualized visuals draw in the initial attention of an audience and satisfies a primordial desire for pleasurable looking (Mulvey, 1975: 8-9), this along with the up tempo beat increases the appeal of the song to people. The visuals, in this case, support what is being sung, enforcing the meaning behind the lyrics – the group are not only singing about the their view of the government but showing you how they feel. The visuals very much so take away from what is being said.

If the song is really about politics and a serious topic with regards to poverty in America, why is the lap dance metaphor used? The lap dance metaphor has two beneficial uses. One. As said before sex sells, and if viewing the video as an advertisement for the song, brands, production company, etc. then using the age old idea of sex to grab peoples primal attention is a good hook. Two. By comparing the politicians/government to lap dancers and strippers demines the American government, showing them to be nothing more than money grabbing idiots. This statement shows the views of the people in the American slums and deprived areas; N.E.R.D is giving a voice to them by releasing this song. With all this said the video does still exploit female sexuality, showing women to be kissing each other and each other’s body parts, using close up, slow motion shows, lingering on the sexual acts performed in the video. 

The women in Nelly – Tip Drill are exploited for there bodies for the males pleasure, however some post feminist see this as empowerment rather than demining. They believe that they for simple showing what “they’ve got” – their bodies – they are getting money, and if the men what to give up their money, more fool them. This idea is supported in the lyrics “I got you payin’ my bills and buying automobiles” this line puts the idea across that the women are using the men just as much as the men are using the women. Lyrically both males and female are portrayed to be equals, however when the video comes into play this idea is completely thrown out of the window, as the women are visuals scantily clad and nothing more than sexual objects.

Tip Drill was written produced and directed for an older audience and for a strip club called “””””” (Vibe, 2004). The older audience restriction at the time was limited to those allowed to enter a strip club, so over 18’s. Still today there is a viewing restriction when viewing the video on the Internet. YouTube will not allow you to view the video unless you are logged in and over 18, and they have a content warning that the video may be inappropriate for some users. When you think about Tip Drill contextually the premise of the music video and the highly sexualized female body, standing on the thin line between music video and pornography, the images seen in Nelly’s video are entirely acceptable.

All of the mentioned music videos offer a limited portrayal of women, showing them as objects, rather than the women they are, and dehumanizing them. The women are repeatable shown with close up shots, which linger on the curves of the body, or buttocks and breast. This can even be said for the song, which is meant to be liberating women (Destiny’s child –Survivor). As for the music videos that display male dominates (Lapdance and Tip Drill in particular) the women have little “face time”, enforcing the idea that they are only being represented as objects.

As the topic of sex has become less of a taboo subject “the video form has gladly tapped into the taboo” (Davies, 2013: 50) the visuals used in music videos have change from implicit to explicit, to boarder line pornographic. With three of the four music videos (Tip Drill, Lapdance, Windowlicker) satisfying the “heterosexual male fantasy of ‘girl on girl’”.

It is clear to see that female sexuality is exploited in many different forms when it comes to R ‘n’ B music videos. Both technical and visual techniques are used to objectify, de-humanize and fragment women and their form – such technical aspects as close up shot, camera movements that roam the female form (guiding the audience and mirroring the heterosexual viewing) and such visual techniques as scantily clad dressed females, and narratives that encourage self touching and fondling of other women. Although the use of sex can be justified to an extend, because of the age old use of sex in advertising, the extend of sexual visuals caused the ‘advert’ no become ‘pornography’ and can no longer be seen as promoting instead seen as stimulating pleasure.

 Bibliography

Books

·      B. Yousman, J. Earp and J.Geissman, 2007,Dreamworld 3: Desire, Sex, & Power in Music Video (Study Guide)

·      E. A. Kaplan, 1987, Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Post Modernism and Consumer Culture. 1^st edition, New York, NY Methuen Inc.

·      T. Reichert, 2007, Issues in American Advertising: Sex, politics, and viral 1^st edition, Copy Workshop.

Newspaper

·      Redeye, R, 2004. Nelly Feel the Heat. The Chicago Tribune, April 2nd, 2004

Magazines

·      Davies, S, 2013, Eye Tunes. Sight & Sound. 50-54

·      Mulvey, L, 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16.3, 6-18.

·      2004. What's the World on Nelly: Pop Star, Pimp or Gangster?. Vibe, November 2004

Documentries

·      Miss Representation, 2012. [DVD] Jennifer Siebel Newsom, USA: Virgil Films and Entertainment.

Websites

·      http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/destinyschild/survivor.html

·      http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nelly/tipdrill.html

·      http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nerd/lapdance.html

·      www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2008/03/does-sex-in-adv.html(HASHTAG).UcgIsvIQF1Y

·      http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=R'n'B

Critical Evaluation

I found that when researching the topic of female sexuality, I found a lot of interesting facts and my research expanded a lot, giving me a larger basin of fact, theorist and people to refer to. However this did cause me to steer away from the question when trying to answer it. I feel I did not successfully do was answer the question fully. I found myself more than often veering of topic from the question, and when reading back over it I feel that some points could have been more concise and/or answer the question more directly. To avoid this in the future I will continuously refer back to the question. Also to avoid this before hand I will make a list of points that directly refer to the question, and include only these, so I stay on track.

To begin with I looked at and analyzed the four chosen music videos that represented the stereotypical female sexuality. From this I created a table (hard copy available) with the different topics I wanted to talk about in my essay. I didn’t manage to talk about them all however, for example the editing, as I became intrigued with the idea of music videos being a form of advertisement, and decided to expand on this topic instead. Although I would have liked to cover the entire topics in my analysis table I feel that I was able to make good points and justification on the topic of advertisement instead.  

For my research I began by looking at the research suggested to us. This helped me to gain a basic understanding of the topic, and from this I expanded my research. One theory that was mention was the theory of the male gaze. I searched on the Internet for more information about the male gaze. I looked at the published books available online, before looking at webpages with no viability – as a published book has a lot more credibility.

I was able to find resources that were created recently, dated this year even. I am glad about this as I found what was being said support the points I was making, about videos that were 10 years old and over. The fact that information today supports music video from so long ago, shows the unchanged female form in R ‘n’ B music videos. I did comply a primary questionnaire to understand how the viewing public sees the representation of women in the music videos,  i had planned to distribute this around the college and town centre however i was not able to, therefore i did not manage I managed to include some of my finding. Much of my research was made up from secondary sources, I would have liked to include more primary resources, but the secondary one play a large part in supporting points I have made. For future research task I would like to include a variety of secondary resource, for example, more audio, or interviews, rather than the majority text based.


When i began my research i was given several secondary sources to analysis and use, one of these was the book Music Video and the politics of Representation by Diane Railton and Paul Walton. From this book i read that music video were a form of advertising, which was a new way i looked at music videos, as i had never consider them to be a form of adverting before. From this i used google to search for music videos as advertising, this search gave me both qualitative and quantitative research. I gained a lot of information from the PQ Media website (a well know, highly rated and widely used research website) which broadened my research further, leading me down the root of product placement. All of the ideas about music video as advertising caused me to looked at the music videos in a different light; changing my opinion from seeing them as stereotyping female sexuality to seeing them as competing for attention in a large industry of adverts. PQ Media Global Product Placement Spending Forecast 2012-2016 report was a good research basis for stats and figures, enabling me to prove comments i had made with figures and quantitative research.

When i decided to look at the music videos as adverting i felt that the context of the music videos (why they were made, who directed the video, etc) would help deepen the basis of my information and hopefully support my arguement, which i found it did greatly.

I was able to argue Mulveys point of the perspective literally being from a male point of view, being behind the camera, by my contexual research, as i knew that the music video Lapdance by N.E.R.D was directed by a woman, Diane Martel. this fact helped to introduce the idea of the female gaze, the pst feminist and female empowerment.

I also read an article from Vibe about Nelly. the article included a discussion about Nelly's controversial Tip Drill video. from this article i obtained contextual information about the production of the music, and solidified my point about music videos being advertisments, however in this case not just for the sale of the record. Nelly's Tip Drill song and video were produced at the request of a stripe club.