Regulation in music videos

The BBFC is on organisation who specialise in the control of music video content. Such content like the representation of religions, races, drugs and sexually explicit material. Restrictions are put in place to stop people of a young age to stop viewing the material, if the content in the video is deemed to be unsuitable by the BBFC. Recent events involving music videos have led to the government and organisations like The BBFC to be more aware and pay more attention to the content displayed in some music videos, for example, the sexualisation of people in music videos, and how easy it is for people of a young age to access this sort of material. This government interest has resulted in the video recordings act that should restrict how easily available children can view explicit content. Although the government and BBFC have paid more attention to such matters, explicit content is still released in music videos on a regular basis. Also, although these regulations are in place, it is still very easy for people to view explicit content, for example on YouTube, for some explicit content to be viewed, a person must confirm their age by signing into their account stating they are 18, such an account can be created with no insight into the persons age and the person can just lie. Thus, regulation over the internet is a very difficult matter to handle.

A notable music video which stirred up a lot of controversy due to it's explicit content was 'Blurred Lines' by Robin Thicke. This video contained sexually explicit content, and thus a regulated version was released which covered the areas which were deemed explicit.

Here is the regulated version of the song 'Blurred Lines' by Robin Thicke. The 'Unrated' version had to be taken off of YouTube and is only available to be watched on the official Vevo website.

Controversial Music Videos

Over time, thousands of music videos have been created for thousands of songs, most of which have been well received. However, some of these music videos have been viewed as controversial. So what constitutes a controversial music video?

A controversial music video is one that leads to prolonged public disagreement or heated discussion.
There have been many of music videos that have done, and continue to do just that. A perfect example of such a music video is Like a Prayer by Madonna.
 

This song was released in 1989 and stirred up massive controversy an is widely regarded as one of the most controversial music videos of all time.
The video featured Jesus being portrayed as an African American man, and Madonna kissing him etc.
Along with that Madonna is shows dancing in a field of burning crosses. This may have been seen as more controversial in the time it was released that now mostly due to the fact that in modern society, we see things that are worse that this all the time, such a music video being released today would most certainly not get the sort of reaction it did in 1989. Nevertheless, this song was seen as extremely controversial and offended many religious and non religious people alike.

The Male Gaze

The concept of gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented.

For feminists it can be thought of in 3 ways:

1.      How men look at women

2.      How women look at themselves

3.      How women look at other women

Main features of ‘The Male Gaze’ theory (1975)

1.      The representation of women as a sexual fantasy and from a heterosexual point of view

2.      Scopophilia – the pleasure involved in looking at other peoples bodies

3.      Patriarchal society

4.      Objectification of female characters

5.      Active male and passive female

6.      Men – controlling subjects

7.      Women as an image

8.      Men do the looking and the women are there to be looked at

9.      Needs of the male ego

Laura Mulvey coined the term ‘Male Gaze’ in 1975. She believes that in film audiences have to ‘view’ characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male.

 The camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction to these events.

 Relegates women to the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.

 Use of the Male Gaze in everyday life

Some theorists also have noted the sexualising of the female body even in situations where female sexiness has nothing to do with the product being advertised

Criticism of Mulvey and Gaze Theory

Some women enjoy being ‘looked’ at e.g. beauty Pageants.

The gaze can also be directed toward members of the same gender for several reasons, not all of which are sexual, such as in comparison of body image or in clothing.

How Genre Reflects Music Videos

In some cases, perhaps more often than not, certain genre characteristics can often restrict the creativity and flexibility of certain music video producers, directors and artists themselves. By limiting them to certain conventions that appear in music videos of a particular genre, for example, a common representation of a music video of perhaps a heavy rock or metal band would display them on stage performing to an audience, or if a boy/girl band have produced a music video, it will more than like contain some sort of dance routine. As Hartley (1994) argues 'genres are agents of ideological closures - they limit the potential meaning of a text'. An example of a music video that depicts this would be Aerosmith VS Run DMC 'Walk This Way' which displays the band performing to a live audience.



Not only does Hartley say this about music videos, but so do Hodge & Kress (1988) who state that 'control of behaviour of producers of such texts, the expectations of potential consumers'. This suggests that the more consumers see of a certain genre and its conventions, they will, in time, get bored of seeing the same thing and find the concepts very repetitive. An example of music videos being similar is Green Day - American Idiot, which shares a similar theme to the music video above, in that it shows all the band performing live, the only difference being that in the Green Day song, the performance is not in front of a live audience.

The White Stripes Website

Here is the website that our group has created for our starter task for the band of our choice, The White Stripes.


http://tomellismedia.weebly.com/

A2 Short Music Video Task - Seven Nation Army

Here is our short music video of Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes.