Essay plan

Introduction

· Relevant quote

· Purpose of the industry

· Ideology of the industry

· What has been the case in the past

· Why I am going to look at videos

· Importance of historical

· Introduce basic grasp of theory

Point 1

· Women being called bitches and hoes

· Where the terms originated

· The significance

· Why they are considered in such light

· Whether it is parallel with the zeitgeist

Point 2

· Female figures in the industry

· Lil Kim, Rah Diggah, Missy Elliot, Salt N Peppa, Foxy Brown, Remy Martin

· These females all reinforce these slutty ideologies being portrayed about women

· They are extremely influential because they represent themselves and are not being represented by anyone else

· Remy Martin in the ‘Lean Back’ video is a subversion of ideas as she is shown in control of her sexuality and the dominant character as she forces the man to pleasure her in a dismissive manner

· She has to adopt male qualities such as a bassy voice

Point 3

· Make it rain video, the sexual innuendoes and how this represents the attitude of the industry

· How it is unparallel with the forward movement of women in society

· Women are seen as another object or possession of the male characters, this is parallel with the industries materialistic ideology

· Women have been ‘symbolically annihilated’, Gaye Tuchman’s theory

· This could be seen as part of a male backlash

· Due to the slightly increased success of women in the industry men felt to put women back in their place

Point 4

· Historical texts such as OPP and Ain’t no half stepping

· Women are inferior in both these videos

· It is evident that this was perhaps the birth and the trigger for the future much more explicit texts

· Maybe talk about snoop Dogg being a porn star?

opening paragraph

”Life's not a bitch, life it’s a beautiful woman; you only call her a bitch because she won't let you get that pussy. Maybe she didn't feel y'all shared any similar interests, or maybe you're just an asshole who couldn't sweet talk the princess”-Aesop Rock.

If one looks in to the origin of 'Hip-Hop' culture they would realise that it was in fact a constructive movement for ethnic minorities who lived in deprived areas of America, which gave them a mainstream voice to portray their views. 'Hip-Hop' has always been renowned for its controversial messages and statements. Racism, political views and gang violence have all known to be issues addressed freely by artists in the past and present. However, the relelentless degradation of women has seemed to become something that is considered part of 'Hip-Hop' and of what audiences expect from it. Females in the 'Hip-Hop' industry have been in the past and arguably more so in the present, degraded and been subjected to the powerful male gaze. Females have been fetishised to enhance the powerful status of the male figures within the industry. Through the production of music videos, the ideologies and values of the industry are communicated and are therefore able to reproduce themselves in a more explicit manner. This study will analyse, through looking at past and present examples of music videos, how the industries ideologies have evolved and whether the sexual representation is being abolished.

laura mulvey

Laura mulvey was the key theorist that suggested the argument of ‘the controlling male gaze’. She said that women are merely presented as objects of image and the man as the bearer of the look. Mulvey suggested that Hollywood movies were constructed to identify with men by using maole protagonists the vast majority of the time. She said that the male dominated movies were also for the ‘male spectator’. Men were considered the protagonist who acted as the catalyst for all events. Women were considered to be a device to amplify a male’s dominance through being feeble and weak sex symbols. Mulvey defined that the male spectatorship had two types of reading of women. She differentiated them by naming one as voyeuristic and the other as fetishistic. Voyeuristic or voyeurism involves a more sadistic edge according to mulvey. The male audience has a controlling gaze and the pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt - asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness. Fetishistic on the other hand is defined more along the lines of: looking, in contrast, involves ‘the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure it into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous. This builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself. The erotic instinct is focused on the look alone’. ‘the female image as a castration threat constantly endangers the unity of the diegesis and burst through the world of illusion as an intrusive, static, one-dimensional fetish. Thus the two looks materially present in time and space are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego' (Mulvey, 1986). Mulvey’s work was considered an adaptation or expansion of the bass ideas of Sigmund Freud. A branch of mulvey’s theory was the idea of castration anxiety. This is the subconscious deep rooted fear that a women doesn’t have a penis as a punishment that a man fears of happening to himself.

Big Daddy Kane- Ain't no half steppin'

this text is a very good example of the evolution of hip hop music as a genre and in particular the music videos themselves. a very patriarchal ideology is being communicated to the audience in many different cases. a specific example of this is when Big Daddy is sitting in his corner of the boxing ring and numerous women are shown abrasing him all over with pleasured looks on their face. these women also happen to be below him which can be reffered to as a kind of metaphor for society and the ideology of the genre, where women are indeed subordinate. this is an example from 1988 and therefore as one would expect the content and graphic nudity levels are less apparent, however, due to positioning and non verbal constructs of the text the audience are able to withdraw the male dominant ideologies.