I am currently taking a Psychology of Women/Women's Studies course and have really enjoyed the class all term. I have so much respect for my professor and the way she teaches this course. A couple of her lessons have been supplemented with very intriguing videos, especially one she showed our class today. The video is a documentary titled Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex, & Power in Music Video, produced by Sut Jhally. The main focus of the film is how women are portrayed in music videos, as well as how music videos fail to portray women accurately. Jhally presents the effects this has on real-life behavior and how people attempt to turn these "Dreamworlds" into reality, when in fact the behaviors shown in music videos are not at all (or not nearly) close to how women behave in real life.
I really enjoy when a film or discussion gets me thinking and my mind makes leaps from one idea to the next. The film got me thinking about how I have boycotted rap music due to the foul language, derogatory terms used toward women, and the drug references every rap song seems to "sing" about. I enjoy music that is grammatically correct, tells a story I can follow, and has a beat I can dance along to. I've really come to enjoy country music because it usually falls under these criterion. In the documentary, however, videos for all genres of music, including country, were shown to misportray women in multiple ways. This lead me to my next thought, which was, how have all forms of music been boiled down to videos of women wearing nearly no clothing, washing cars, and getting alcohol poured on them? Many of the times the song has nothing to do with any of the images the video displays. These types of videos simply get the most ratings, and therefore, continue to be produced.
I think this generation of "millenials" and "generation Y's" have become accustomed to a whole different form of music. It is no longer about the meaning behind the song, the musical talent of the artist, or their ability to put on an incredible live show. Now, I know there are some exceptions to this, but for the most part these seem to be the major differences between music in past generations and music now. While I don't usually watch music videos anyway, I think songs need to be taken for what they are, the meaning of the lyrics or the story the song tells, and not some aesthetically pleasing video of a girl dancing to the song in a bikini. There are so many talented musicians in this world overshadowed by the people who yell into microphones about how many girls they took home or how much alcohol they drank. Musicians deserve credit for the hard work they put into writing, singing, producing, and performing the songs they create.
Then I got to thinking, why did everyone make such a big deal about Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball video in the nude/almost nude when girls have been in music videos like this for years? It's acceptable if the girls are with men but as soon as a woman is comfortable being naked alone in a music video, she is deemed a bad person (and called names I refuse to repeat).
I'm very thankful I had the opportunity to watch that video and think about some of these issues today. I highly recommend watching the documentary but not with children present. I briefly mentioned the main argument here since it sparked my ideas but I didn't feel a need to repeat all of Jhally's ideas so find it and watch it if possible.
