Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video.

Any reader of this blog will have noticed that I'm slightly into music videos. I think they can be so much more than just promotional tools, they can stressor expand the artistic genius of the music or even make a mediocre song really interesting. Though that's mainly true for good, usually indie video.

There are also those other videos, that merely stuff as many scantily clad women and cars, bling and booze in a frame as possible, often degrading women and legitimizing sexual violence. Most they accompany (commercial) rap, but enough rock or electro, techno examples exist as well. Sud Jhally did a good documentary on this topic called "Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video". I have to say that though I was shocked, the events and circumstances shown sadly didn't really surprise me.

See the trailer here:



Hat tip to Anna.

Note: If you can't view the YouTube Video (my tip is because it used clips from Universal Rec. clips..) then go to the Media Education Foundation site. A full-length preview is also available for home use.

Don't Be A Fool Like the Rest of Us.

In class today this really cool video by the Gossip was referenced and it was completely appropriate and in context. Sometimes I really like my degree program.

It's shot in Portland, OR, by the way.

For Every Girl / For Every Boy

Found at Genderterror

Quick Thought .... on Naming.

Does the shift from the male positive, common use appliance Walkman to the unisex/non-gendered name iPod exemplify a general shift away from gendered, male positive naming?

G-Unit or P-Elect

Really interesting short documentary (10 min.) by Byron Hurt comparing the contrasting male gender roles represented by Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent, and Barack Obama.



(via merely thinking)

Things to Spoil the Holiday Spirit III*

A Dennis Prager quote via Feministing:

First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife's refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny).

Some people should just fucking stop talking about women AND/OR men.



* Thing I obviously being the Israel - Palestine mess, II the pope's remarks on non-traditional heterosexual relationships. But don't even get me started on that.

The Male Mujer.

From the New York Times:

But nowhere are attitudes toward sex and gender quite as elastic as in the far reaches of the southern state of Oaxaca. There, in the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, the world is not divided simply into gay and straight. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call "muxes" (pronounced MOO-shays) -- men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned netherworld between the two genders.

"Muxe" is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish "mujer," or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community.

Not only is it a interesting third gender concept (more/via). But it is an indigenous, an old concept. A socially accepted role for men who feel like women - something 'we' in the Occident* either still dismiss or see as a progressive achievement. In my eyes, this is just another little fact proving the whole colonial "European societies as epitome of the civilization" idea was (or is) ridiculous.

*As a sort of Said-esque term

It's not easy being a manly ad..

(Image byCaveman 92223; via)