Blending into the Crowd on MTV

I just got back from the gym at Kapiolani 24 Hour Fitness. Inevitably, one of the four televisions there is on MTV, which is a station I like, for the most part. Yet I'm getting a little more than irritated by the way video producers are throwing beautiful women around, mixing them up into a sea of nothingness. The heart of my complaint is not about women being scantily clad or gyrating on-screen. It's about what it means to be an individual.

The video showed thug-looking superstars, dressed in very baggy T-shirts, rapping. Around the guys were maybe 50 bikini-clad, perfectly shaped women dancing around them, gyrating in front of the camera, looking very street-smart and in-command, sexually speaking. The camera panned the scene from a distance, averaging these beautiful women into a sea of non-individual "things." When there were close-ups of the women, the camera "eyed" one woman for two seconds, then the next in line for two seconds, then the next for two seconds, then the next, then the next. They were all showpieces, each fitting into the rhythm of the next bass drum and evaporating just as quickly.

I do like it when a woman is depicted as strong, instead of docile and virginal and weak. There's something to be said about a woman claiming her sexuality. But these videos wash all of this away when producers overstuff the screen with beautiful woman times 50. Each one of them becomes nominalized. This is not the kind of respect women have fought for over generations.

Censorship is never the solution, but open discussion is. Has anyone else out there been struck the same way?

Comments

I don't think you're alone in your concerns. I'm not personally convinced, though, that there's much difference between a sea of bodies versus leering close-ups of a single woman.

I, too, cheer the general reclaiming of sexuality one sees among women these days. On the other hand, it seems the response from the opposite side of the aisle is already overwhelming that trend. These are the days, after all, of Girls Gone Wild videos advertised on mainstream networks, of The Man Show, of the legitimization of magazines like FHM, Maxim, and Stuff.

It seems to me almost as if men, when facing a generation of women who are finally getting comfortable in their bodies (if they can be said to be confortable at all in the grand scheme of things), decided only to further amplify their own self-centered, if not exploitative, sexuality. "If women are gaining power by reclaiming their sexiness," the thinking might go, "men will undercut that by objectifying them even further."

The more I can get men to objectify me, the more I seem to be able to control them. To make yourself so desireable that men would jump through hoops for you is such an easy way for a woman to gain power over a man. I may be candy for men, but I think that I am just as "guilty" as they are. As a woman I use my sexuality to manipulate men for my own means.

Talk to most women who are "all that" and are comfortable with their own sexuality, and they'll tell you it's a power they have over men. And like PM, whether it's conciously or unconciously, they know they're using it to their advantage.

Men are no different. And along with their good looks, the ones who know they can say the right thing to a women to press the right buttons, manipulate women just the same.

The issue here isn't so much about how one sex is ojectifying another, rather it's about how those of us who "don't have it" are somehow threatened by what we see and perhaps--just perhaps--wished that we did "have it."

I think there is a distinction between the sexual power described in the above posts vs. the femine impotence clearly evident on pimp-ho videos, where one guys gets 50 writhing and willing females all to himself. Women may appear goddess-like and in control, but who are they kidding if they have a two-second shot among a harem of nameless babes at getting "in" with the master on the set?

People like Madonna have brought a sense of liberation for women and sexuality. MTV videos, at least the ones I've seen lately, set us back. It's as if they took the liberated sexy woman and turned her into a dot among dots - not my idea of sexual liberation. As Amercian society becomes more open to sexual expression, it's easy to lump all things sexual into one category and never really discuss the subtleties that arise along the way.

To address the side issue of using sexuality for gain - sexual power is indeed a part of everyday life for both men and women. While I'm not particularly against the use of such power, I've been around long enough to know how short-lived its effects can be.

MTV Sucks.

Rap music originated from disco.

It came from a master of ceremonies (MC) who was playing 70's records at weddings and parties and grabbed the microphone and started talking too much over top of the other people's music.

Then "Rapper's Delight" was the first rap song to make the genre popular and it was nothing more than a disco song by the Sugar Hill gang.

The videos and lyrics treat woment badly, calling them whores, and b*tches. And MTV even gave an award to the guy (you know who, the idiot) who talks about killing his wife, slitting girls throats, beating girls in the face, telling girls he is going to "cop a squat on them" and sh*t on them, and about making them s--k his d--k. And people give him an Academy award for this. Not only that but he expressly targets the music toward kids, saying so himself. I don't care about free speech, I care about bad taste. The stuff just lacks talent and is in poor taste.

Rap is musically untalented. Today the so-called rap "artists" on MTV can't even sing, they simply don't have the voice for it, and lack the talent to generate something called: a 'note'. Ja Rule sounds like a Frog, and Eminem sounds whiny like a cross between Urkel the nerd boy and dry fingernails being drawn across a chalk board.

Someone mentioned recently that for the first time, the top 10 hits on the charts were all hip-hop. However, you'll also note that it also marks the first time in history that none of the 10 artists can even play a thing called a musical guitar. Rappers can't even play a musical instrument. And anyone can come up with lyrics, so that's no great feat. Every other artist has come up with lyrics too, it's just that they also have the ability to SING them too.

For anyone who calls Eminem a 'lyrical genius', here's a bit of news: If 13 year olds 'understand' it, and so many say they relate to it, guess what, it's not genius. Einstein's field tensor equations in his theory of general relativity are genius. The Many-World theory of Quantum physics is genius. The surrealism of Salvador Dali and the works of Leonardo da Vinci are genius. Eminem is a lyrical doofus. If tons of little 12 year olds 'get it' then guess what... It's not genius. Think about it. "Ya kno wud I'm sayin'?"

In any case, somewhere along the line, music that used to be cool, rebellious, had some sort of message, meaning or philosophical impact, and was fun, and ROCKED, turned into lame, profanity laced, racially oriented, sexually explicit sleazy gangsta, thug, pimp, and ho music, plagiarized and talked over top of by some tooth-decayed ass who's now coming out with a 'clothing line.' We need 'Artists' who can actually play a musical instrument and someone who can sing a note not just some someone who is essentially an assh*le who got hold of a microphone and starts talking over top of music they didn't even compose. Sheesh, rap is even below the level of stinky Milli Vanilli music, at least they could dance, and put on some kind of stupid show, but rappers can't even do that much. Just stomp around the stage like the snuffleuppagus, saying the word "Yo," and making some autistic arm movement.

Video didn't kill the radio star, it killed the musician, and replaced it with all 'image', and all the good music has died along with it.

I have to object to the comment above. While you may discredit the art form know collectively as "rap" or more acurately as hip hop, you fail to see from a clear and objective perpective. Granted, main stream rap today does not convey a postive message, nor improves (and in fact could be construed as a step back) on the woman rights/sexuality issue, but to say that rap/hip hop has not have a profound impact in the areas where it originated from and it's movement from the impoverished innercity neighborhoods to across the nation.

Rap is music. It take the right hook, lyrical skill, and know how to make a good hit. It's not easy! And in fact, like other genres in the music biz, it's hard to get noticed. Music has always been about events and times in peoples lives. So it does not take a genius to figure out people who in fact had crap lives have a great deal negative things to say. Let's take Marshall Mathers for instance. He had troubled childhood, moved a lot and didn't have a much in the way of money, family or good friends. It's well known fact that he exagerates some things in his songs. In fact, he makes a point in several songs to tell the listener so. Granted not every artist will do that, but it should be said, take what you hear with a grain of salt, not everything spoken is nessarly true.

However, rap/hip hop has always been about street life, and currently street life is basicly growing up a profanity laced, violent enviroment. Street life is not touch feely, nor is it forgiving. Offend the wrong person and you'll be a dead man/woman in week or less. And to be frank the black neigborhoods where some of these rappers came from are in fact sh*t holes. I've been there. I've seen it with my two eyes. The innercities are not nice places to live. Most americans are just plain blind to this. It is a hostile enviroment, and for some it's a struggle to get to the next day. Crime, drugs, lack of good schools, latchkey kids, teenage pregnacies, lack of father figures etc. take a big toll on the communites in those cities. The combonation of problems make for unsupervised children, with a lack of firm guidance from a parent because (most likely the mother) is often at work and can't afford to stay home and watch for the child. It goes without saying that unsupervised childeren get into trouble. But's worse in the ghetto, where the local drug dealers, pimps, gangs, etc. Pressure and influence impressionable minds.

To make clearer, if you don't like what your hearing, then help formulate a plan to attack the real problem - the ghetto "livestyle". It's ghetto live that gives these people something to say. Clean up the ghettos, and the music will tone down. If nothing is done the attitudes and values communicated by this music is spreading through music. influencing other young, impressiable minds in communites around the nation.

Clean up the communities, and the music will clean it's self up.

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