Sut Jhally's educational film Dreamworlds was a hard watch for just about everone in class I'd wager. Utterly depressing really, watching half naked women have lunch meats thrown at their asses. As if I needed a reason to loath Fred Durst anymore than I already did. Jhally's assertion that the gaze of music videos is that of the standard male adolescent fantasy is certainly an astute observation that I'd not put together before. How I failed to notice is something given that I've seen the video for "Stacey's mom has got it going on" on more than one occassion. Nevertheless, the overwhelming mysogyny, which permeates music video industry is all but impossible to miss. Jhally's observations on rap videos were particularly thought provoking. It was interesting to watch a Biggie Smalls dvd the other day with these thoughts in mind. The dvd contains videos from the early 90's, when rap music really started to pick up in popularity. The videos are standard hiphop fare, it's just that they are the first of their kind, pioneers if you will. The amateur nature of them however, shows just how formulaic rap videos generally are. While I was in agreance with much of Jhally's discussion of race and capitalism in the music industry, I was left wondering to what extent rap artists like N.W.A., Two Live Crew, and 50 cent, should shoulder responsibility for this crap they make money off of. I know the people who get real paid from this stuff are rich white guys, but there's no absolving Sir Mix A Lot's "I Like Big Butts" on account of David Geffen. I'll reserve my harshest criticism however for Fred Durst and Justin Timberland, who routinely mix disturbing violence against women in their videos with regular run of the mill misogyny. In stringing together all of these images, Dreamworlds illustrates that the desire, sex, and power in musics videos is that of men, or more specifically young men and adolescent boys.
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