In Jennifer Lopez's video "I Luh Ya Papi ft. FrenchMontana," she addresses the way women are portrayed in hip hop videos and
flips that idea so that men are now in the women's roles. It's no secret that women,
primarily Latina and black, are portrayed as visual sex objects or objects of
desire in these hip hop videos. Lopez knows this and turns it on its head and
places men as the sex objects and herself and the women as the dominant force. The
video starts with Lopez and her friends talking with a record label executive
discussing where to film her video. Her friends bring up the point that if
Lopez was a guy, the video would be on a yacht or in a mansion, surrounded by
champagne and beautiful girls and why it's always men that objectify women and
why women can't be the ones to objectify men. Lopez thinks on this statement
and decides that yeah, she's going to flip the gender roles and take the power
and dominance and objectify the men in her video for once. The music then
starts and Lopez is seen sitting on her bed with two naked men behind her and
two men in underwear sitting in the chairs in front of her bed. It's obviously
seen that these men are there to be hot and looked at, not taken seriously as
people. She then walks to the bathroom where a man is seen in the shower and
she drapes her long gold necklaces over her, similar to what male rappers do in
a lot of their videos. The video then jumps to a pool scene where the men are
lounging by the pool half naked, swimming, or walking in slow motion, with
Lopez dominating the scene and dancing. In other scenes, her female friends can
be seen in the pool with the men catering to her, whether it be feeding her
grapes or getting her drinks, giving her the power and control men normally
have. The video does portray some instances of rape culture with the majority
of the video revolving around ogling the hot men and viewing them as simple sex
objects, not real people. At 2:08-2:15, Lopez and her friends can be seen taking
pictures of the men on their iPad, with her friends posing with the men as if
they were sex objects. The video then cuts to Lopez and her two friends
sensually watching the men "washing a car," which is more so them
covering themselves in water or soap, rubbing their butt on the car, and just generally
being sexy. The video then goes to them on a yacht. Similarly to them being at
the pool, Lopez is seen dominating the scene while the me lounge out in Speedos and get a tan while she
points and stares at their perfectly sculpted abs, similar to any rap video on
a yacht where women are tanning in a bikini being sexy and seductive.
Interlaced are short scenes of Lopez and her friends watching one of the men
twerk with one of Lopez's friends smacking his butt, and then one of Lopez's
friends is seen pulling on a man's necklace, possibly signaling ownership of
that man, and scenes of the women quickly pulling down the men's Speedos to
show their butt. The general theme of
this video being Lopez and her friends being the dominant force with hot men as
submissive sexual beings, only there for the amusement of Lopez and her
friends. One of the problem's with this video is when French Montana's part of
the song comes up. During his scene, the gender role reversal is flipped back
to normal and Montana can be seen fully clothed with curvy women in tight animal
print jumpsuits and bikini tops can be seen twerking around him, one of the
women eventually crawling on her hands and knees in front of him, but, Montana
gets to remain clothed and dominant, another evidence of rape culture and male
dominance over women.
In
2013, Lily Allen set out to create a video highlighting feminism and discussing
sexism in the music industry and set out to do that with her "Hard OutHere" video. The problem is though, the video created more harm than good.
Throughout the whole video, Allen is seen as a dominating powerhouse,
especially in front of her dancers. The biggest thing to be noted is that almost
all her dancers are black women and in terms of clothing, she is pretty much
covered while her dancers are scantily clad. It's clear that even though she embraces being a woman, she is
exerting the dominance men normally hold in music videos. At 2:12, Allen can be
seen photographing a scantily clad woman in a seductive position, yet again
giving her the dominance and power often exuded by men in music videos. It then cuts to a scene of Allen almost fully
clothed and dancing in front of a car with black and other minority women
leaned over the car twerking, crawling on their hands and knees on the ground, pouring
champagne on their chests and butts, smacking each other's butts, and
seductively licking a champagne bottle. While Allen clearly has the male
centered domination in this video, the rest of the women are objectified and
demeaned. At 3:48, Allen herself is seen grinding with a black woman and Allen
is shown to do the hand motions Akon so popularized in his song "Smack
That." Allen tried to create a feminist empowered video, but it didn't
quite go as planned. While the lyrics of this song are pretty good, the video
exemplifies not only rape culture by using women as sexual objects, but also as
cultural appropriation from the using the black women's bodies as props.
Throughout the video, black women can be seen patting their crotch, the camera
repeatedly zooms in on them twerking in slow motion, white women can be seen
stuffing money in their bras, black women are seen smacking each other's butts,
and just generally a lot of twerking and focus on black women's butts. The only
reason these women are in the video is for them to act as sex props writhing on
the ground. Allen takes a part of black culture and makes it central part of
her video, pretty much turning twerking of black culture into a joke, making
this issue bigger when you think of the line "Don't
need to shake my ass for you, because I've got a brain." The
song title itself is in reference to the song "Hard Our Here for a
Pimp" by black rap group Three 6
Mafia for the movie Hustle & Flow, both of those culturally black things.
One
thing I noticed about these videos that in both the Jennifer Lopez and the Lily
Allen video, both the women are still sexualized, even though they are shown to
be portrayed in a more dominant role. Lopez is dressed in sexy and skintight
clothing while still dancing sexually as a woman in a normal hip hop video
would and is nearly as naked as the objectified boys in the video are. Allen is
portrayed in sexy jumpsuits and leotards and dancing seductively. Whether the
women wanted to be portrayed like that or if their record label wanted them to
still be sexy and provocative is unknown, but should still be considered.
No comments:
Post a Comment