Moreover, the rape symbolism becomes pronounced in "How Low." First, Ludacris walks through the mirror into the girls' room. Initially there were only a few females but when he steps inside, somehow there are several more girls in the room. His stepping through the mirror is a gross violation of their privacy and personal space. The act is a symbolic rape as Ludacris enters the room uninvited while the women are scantily clad. Moreover, Ludacris brings with him some male friends who don creepy white masks like that of Jason in Friday the 13th. The video then depicts some of the women running scared down the stairs, as they are being chased by these creeps in the hockey masks. The imagery is frighteningly sexist, as males are shown as preying on helpless females. Later, women are being stripped of their clothing against their will by an unseen force. They have looks of fear and dismay on their faces, which then--appallingly -- turn into looks of pleasure. Thus, the stereotype that women want to be raped is reinforced repeatedly in this video.
Stereotypes related to gender and ethnicity are also explored in pop music videos. For instance, in Ludacris's "How Low," lyrics refer to women as "French Vanilla," "Caramel," and "Chocolate" depending on their ethnicity. Then, Ludacris mentions how he is not trying to use "discrimination" but that he likes how "Asian women like to serve us." Women serve as decorative objects, but they also literally serve the men fruits, cake, and other treats.
Not all pop music videos are sexist. Many are gender neutral, while some are in fact firmly feminist. For example, OK Go's video for "This Too Shall Pass (Version 2)" has no gender references at all. The video depicts a chain-reaction project and is a gender-neutral and fun video. The lyrics are likewise gender-neutral. In Paramore's video for "Brick by Boring Brick," gender is also relatively neutral. The song is about a...
Music Producers Biographical Introduction: Teo Macero Producers work behind the scenes and are the unsung heroes of music. While some producers receive public notoriety like Brian Eno and George Martin; others like Teo Macero remain known mainly to music scholars and serious audiophiles. In 2008, when Macero died, The New York Times ran an obituary with the tagline: "Teo Macero, 82, Record Producer," as if readers would need that crucial bit of
Popular Music The New Face Book of Rock and Roll An entirely new book (okay score) on the future of music and the place of rock and roll is being written, and yet we really can't even tell what the experience will be like, though it will most likely be a continued mix of country/folksy democracy. What we can tell is that it will come in the packaging of a self-published,
Scorpions The audience for popular music frequently assumes that the songs heard on the radio or downloaded from iTunes are predominantly a form of personal expression on the part of the artist, and that song lyrics may express the most raw form of autobiography (such as the recent Grammy-winning success of "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse, who turns up in tabloids to demonstrate that she practices what she preaches) but they do
Though formulaic language expressions have been in regular use, in popular media forms, for at least the majority of the twentieth century if not indeed for centuries longer, their recognition and study is recent development (Van Lancker-Sidtis & Rallon 2004). Some texts have even been found to be comprised of a quarter or of formulaic expressions, demonstrating at once a reliance on collective cultural interpretations and a marked lack of
The economic pragmatism that the Marshall Plan demonstrates for the United States is not necessarily as clearly observable form a basic look at history as is the containment of communism. The decades following World War II and the implementation of the Marshall Plan were definitely economically successful fro Europe and for the United States, but how this relates directly to the Marshall Plan and not simply to the end of
Gayatri Gopinath, associate professor of women and gender studies at the University of California at Davis, says that many of these young Asian-Americans who join artistic subcultures are individuals who cross over from one country to another in addition to not fitting into the norm of gender, sexuality or psychology. A first-world homosexual transnational has difficulty finding rights of citizenship or dual citizenship in any geographical locations of a diaspora
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