Research investigation - draft.

To what extent are young women such as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift represented stereotypically in the pop music industry today? 


The representation of young women differs in different areas of the media, but is rapidly changing and young women from the ages of 18-25 in the pop music industry are becoming increasingly objectified within advertising and music videos in the media. In the documentary Miss Representation it states ‘The representation of females in film has become much more narrow and cartoon like than in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s’ (7) also that ‘In the 1990’s studies found a steady increase in explicitly sexual images in advertising’ (7). I am going to be investigating how young artists such as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift are represented and how they represent their selves in the pop music industry today, by analysing Miley Cyrus' music video 'We Can't Stop' (3) from her new album Bangerz (1) and Taylor Swifts music video 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' (4) from her album 22. (2)

Firstly I will be exploring whether young female artists are consciously objectifying themselves within their music video’s to increase their success or whether they are just puppets for the music industry. Secondly I will analyse the lyrical content of the two artists and how it investigates their chosen theme of the song. And lastly I will be discussing the effects that both of these points can have on the artists ‘intended’ audience and what the consequences of this might be. To help answer these investigation I will be applying a number of theories such as: Laura Mulvey’s – The Male Gaze and how women are objectified and seen through the eyes of a male. Hyperreality and postmodernism will be discussed to see if there is a true representation of ‘real women’. Uses and Gratifications will also be applied to assess how representations affect others and reasons why they watch and listen to music by artists such as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.

The Male Gaze, developed by feminist, Laura Mulvey describes how the audience, or viewer, is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. (5) This can be applied to most visual texts in the media industry and specifically music videos such as Miley Cyrus’ ‘We Can’t Stop’ (3) from her album Bangerz.(1)  Discarding any technical aspects, in the first fifteen seconds we see Miley in a tight white crop top and leggings, being forced to see a lot of her body and this is where the objectification starts. However to contrast, in Taylor Swifts music video ‘We are never ever getting back together’ (4) you could say the opposite, and that the audience of this video is not necessarily put into the perspective of a male. There are no obvious ways of Taylor being objectified or looked at in a sexual way. Even in Miley’s video the mis en scene gives sexual connotations, as the first thing you see is a bed – the first thing that comes to my mind when seeing a bed is sleep, or sex. However in Taylor’s video again like Miley she is in her bedroom, however the environment that she is in would seem a lot more homely with things like bright colours in the background and stuffed birds, which would be seen as childish. Also Taylor is wearing some bright colourful pyjamas that do not show any skin or fragment or objectify her body. 


^ different camera shots, fragment Miley's body

 

‘There are circumstance in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as in the reverse formulation, this is pleasure in being looked at’ (6)

Bibliography:

       (1) Miley Cyrus ‘Bangerz’

       (2) Taylor Swift ‘22’

       (3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrUvu1mlWco

       (4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4iX5D9Z64

       (5) http://katiehamilton25.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-male-gaze-theory.html

        (6) http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf

       (7) Miss Representation documentary

Jaques Lacan

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/lacangaze.html

Personal Investigation - RESEARCH

Freud - Scopophillia, Voyeurism and Objectification

Scopophilia literally means "love of watching." In Freudian analysis, scopophilia is associated with the anal stage of development. Voyeurism is a synonym for scopophilia.

Voyeurism: deriving sexual gratification from observing others in secret. Often the object of voyeurism is undressed or engaged in some kind of sexual activity. The key factor in voyeurism is that the voyeur does not interact personally with the person being observed. Voyeurs are called Peeping Toms after the legendary man who illicitly looked at Lady Godiva during her ride.

Pornography appeals to voyeuristic desires, as does much advertising. Recently, the proliferation of internet webcams has created a new cultural arena of scopophilia.

Movie-making and movie-viewing have long been analyzed as voyeuristic practices. Traditionally, the movie viewer sits in the dark and observes the activities of people on a screen (figured as a window) who appear to be unaware of being watched. Horror films in particular are strongly voyeuristic, in that they characteristically identify the viewer with the point of view of the monster.

http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/scopophilia/scopophilia.html

Personal Investigation - RESEARCH notes

Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory (RESEARCH)

“Woman, then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live our his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command, by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning not maker of meaning.” (Mulvey 484)

http://scmc3001.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/quote-laura-mulvey-visual-pleasure-and-narrative-cinema/

^ 'This quote refers to the male driven culture that our society is composed of. The male gaze is symbolic of the passive role of women in cinema. The psychoanalysis, Mulvey explains, is that women are unaware of their function in the patriarchal culture. Men need somewhere to base their fantasies and women are this outlet. The idea of separation of the audience from the film allows for voyeuristic tendencies that include watching without affecting. She goes on to explain the role of the woman as a provoking object. The woman is there to inspire the man and create an erotic image for him, but she has no importance beyond that.

This idea of the woman character being an object of affection and nothing more seems to be an outdated theory. To some point, women are still sexualized in film as the male roles are dominant. But in current film, there have been increasing numbers of films where the woman is the main character resembling strength and worth. The criticism to this however would be that in these films with women as main characters, there is usually a man there to save her or inspire her. The sexualization of men has increased as well which structures the desires towards a woman audience. The patriarchal society still creates a strong male role in film, but women are starting to make their way through the objectification.'

‘In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active /male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly’ 

http://candipop12group15.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/representation-male-gaze-theory.html

From this quote we can learn that Mulvey is explaining that in videos/film (or in my case music videos) there is an obvious inequality between the male and females shown within the texts. She explains further that the women are objectified and lusted over by the men, and by having a passive mindset, let it happen.

Fish Tank: Genre, Representation and Narrative.

The film Fish Tank is a social realism film, the purpose of social realism is to show real life and every day difficulties and struggles through texts such as fish tank. We are shown many conventions of social realism throughout the text. Some of these  conventions are things such as; natural lighting, realistic camera shots and movement (hand held), gritty urban settings and diegetic sound. I am going to be analysing some of the technical conventions used the scene at the beginning of the film where the main character, Mia is dancing in an empty flat - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoofjmU6RW4. At the beginning, before Mia puts on her music and starts to dance, she's looking out of the window onto the urban council estate, a clear use of diegetic sound is apparent here as you can here cars on roads in the distance and people fighting in the distance, this is an example of a social realism convention as these are every day noises heard by everyone on a day to day basis in urban under-class area's such as hers. The use of diegetic sound doesn't stop there. As Mia puts on her music and starts to dance the music is played out of her own 'cheap' CD player, the music quality is bad and muffled portraying the reality of the situation to the reader. Also in this scene we see that it is lit only by the natural light coming from the windows, at times when the sun is shining through, Mia's face becomes overexposed and details are lost, again this creates a realistic feel to the scene. Where as in a mainstream, hollywood style text, studio lighting, reflectors and more would be used to create the light they want for the situation making it an unrealistic representation.

In the film Fish Tank there is a strong representation of women. Mia the main character lives with her single mum and younger sister - a broken family. Her mum is not represented as the stereotypical 'carer' as a mother. Instead she is aggressive, violent and loud. In the scene when Mia's mum is having a party, her mum aggressively pinches her and tells her to go to her room, this is an example of the non-stereotypical role appose to an stereotypical caring loving mother. However in some ways there are some stereotypes shown through the 3 girls in the text, as we see that their family cannot seem to function without a man. This is shown through Connor - seen as Mia's mum's new boyfriend. In the scene where Connor takes the girls fishing the four of them seem like a real family, the girls are happy and for the first time we actually see them getting on with each other. It is shown that they can actually operate as a family with a man to be the father figure.

The narrative theory of Propp can be applied to Fish Tank in the scene when Mia takes away Connors daughter, Keira. Kiera is represented as the 'princess' we are shown this through her pink and sparkly clothing, which is stereotypical to the princess role. To oppose that Mia is then represented as the villain of this scene as she is wearing all black, black usually has a negative connotation which also represents her as the villain. stereotypically all fairytales there is always a happy ending however in this case Mia is preventing Keira from having her happy ending and breaking the stereotype in Propp's theory.