Dreamworlds 3 - Ellie Merrell

What was most powerful about this video for me was the knowledge that I had never before realized the implications of the music videos I watched. I rarely thought about the way women were represented in the videos. I rarely considered the fact that the storylines of the videos are in control of male directors and producers. I certainly never realized the extent to which viewers internalized and emulated what they saw in the videos. I have to wonder what other promotions of mainstream culture have informed my understanding of gender and sexuality, or of any form of human behavior and identity, without my knowledge. It’s a creepy revelation.

            The story about Jewel evolving from a grounded, modest, authentic singer-songwriter type to a sex icon getting sprayed down with a hose for the pleasure of viewers shook my faith in the authenticity of people. Part of the power of music, especially rock n roll, is the freedom it endows musicians with to say a gigantic “fuck you,” to mainstream society. For this reason, it was all the more disappointing to see Jewel, who seems to participate in the music industry because of a genuine love for music (rather than a desire for fame and money) and its capabilities for communication, create a music video in which the message of the song was lost in the sexual undertones of her performance.

            It was interesting to see the camera techniques used to fragment women’s bodies. I had never picked up on the power of the camera to objectify women in this manner and reduce them to sexual parts, rather than human beings. In class, Brooke brought up an interesting question- where is the line separating what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable content for media? I remember a huge uproar after Adam Lambert’s performance at the American Music Awards a couple of years ago because his performance included man-on-man sexual acts and had a definite S&M theme. However, all of the sex referenced in the performance appeared to be consensual. But when popular rappers hop on stage and spit rhymes about hate sex and about how they have “99 problems but a bitch ain’t one”, viewers don’t’ even bat an eyelash, because they are so accustomed to it.

            The worst part about how sexuality and gender relations are portrayed in the media is that people think it’s okay to emulate the behavior they see in music videos. They fail to recognize that the videos portray a man’s fantasy world and that many of the behaviors are unacceptable in real life. The footage from Central Park in which men sexually harassed and dumped water on women was immensely disturbing, especially the way it almost identically mirrored the images portrayed in a number of music videos.