Women in Rap/Hip Hop Videos
In many rap/Hip hop music
videos is misogyny and women are sexually objectified, subordinated and
marginalised. Gotti et al, (2007) mention
that Women are the both the source and subjects of provocative rap lyrics.
Critical consideration of that statement evidences that women are extremely
exploited in the rap/hip hop music industry and it would be not where it is
without them. The evidence of this can be seen in many of the Rap/hip hop
videos and lyrics of rap songs.
Sexual objectification, Subjectivity and Misogyny
Sturken and Cartwright’s
(2009) notes mention that there is a long tradition in art of understanding the
female nude as the project and possession of the male artist. Despite times
changing and feminist revolutions women are still portrayed as attributes and possessions
of men in Rap/Hip hop and music videos. Particularly good examples of this are 50
Cents ‘pimp’ and Ludacris’s ‘Area codes’ music videos. Apart from the women in
these videos wearing clothes that leave very little to the imagination and
dancing in very sexually provocative manners they are rapped about as
possessions to the male artists. The women in these videos are rapped about and
portrayed as adornment for men.
http://youtu.be/cvrKzmkdBTI Ludacris ft
Nate Dogg- Area codes
With the lyric “I’ve got
whores in different area codes” one can gathers what that the rapper Ludacris
is saying he as a lot of different women in different areas and that all these
women are his whores. So apart from the women being in his possession they are
also his whores. Whores are untrustworthy for monogamous relationships and
therefore hated. Many other rap/hip hop artist call women hoes and bitches and
promote misogyny in their music videos.
Rap/Hip hop artist Bizzare’s
lyrics and imagery in the video for D12’s song on you is the perfect example of
not only misogyny but also degrading and controlling women. Hip hop like many
other places in society is very patriarchal and any women involved normally are
subjected. Yet despite all that treat rappers like Talib Kweli are mentioned (
Crunktastic, 2013) to say that a woman’s first place in Hip hop is to love
them. This implies that women should just be quiet and love the men and accept
all the sufferings and harm men do to them without voicing their opinions.
Video vixens: their side of the story
However despite the general
image some of the women (video vixens) in Rap/Hip hop music videos have a
voice. One of the most popular and controversial video vixen who voiced the
reality of hip hop women imagery is Karrine Steffans. She did this by writing a
book entitled ‘confessions of a video vixen. In the book Karrine talks about
what happens behind the hip hop video scene with particular exposure of the
reality of hyper sexualised video vixens.
A model/ video vixen states (Gotti et al 2007)
that there are more girls in videos now than in previous years and that creates
a competitive arena for the video vixens who have to fight for the attention
and popularity in the music video scene.This competition is said (ibid) to
provoke the women in the videos to be sexually promiscuous so that they can get
better positioning such as being the main girl/woman in a video and overall
popularity on the video vixen scene. Karrine Steffans is also known as ‘super
head’ because of her reputation to give good oral gratification to men before
she got permission to be the main girl/woman of a rap/hip hop music video.
Women who wear fewer clothes and act more promiscuously in the videos are said
to get paid more as well (Gotti et al 2007).
Scopophilia is a term
Sturken and Cartwright’s (2009) reveal to mean the pleasure in looking and
exhibitionism- taking pleasure in being looked at. Irv Gotti et al (2007) spoke
about how some women in the videos get a pleasure and therefore enjoy what they
are doing. Does exhibitionism therefore justify the hyper sexuality in the
music videos?
Female Hip-hop artists/rappers
Despite the rap/hip hip
music videos having many artists there a few female rappers and most of them
have had a male counterpart to enable them to succeed as it is still a very
patriarchal industry. Examples of this are Lauryn hill with the fugees, Lil Kim
with Biggie, Foxy Brown with Jay Z, Missy Elliot with Timberland, Eve with the
Ruff riders and Nikki Minaj with Young money. The very few female artists with
out male enablers are Artists like Queen Latifah and Azealia Banks are the very
few if only the female artist without male rappers as counterparts.
Even though female rappers/
hip-hop artists are empowered women with the freedom to express themselves and
have a lyrical voice majority of the imagery videos such as Nikki Minaj these
is still an over/hyper- sexualisation. However
this time it is women/female rappers objectifying themselves and in a lot of
Nikki Minaj’s videos she is overtly exhibitionist of herself and other females
in her videos.
Unlike most male artists’’ videos portraying
the women as being controlled and objectified mainly for the pleasure of men;
female rapper artists appear more in control despite the hyper-sexuality. This
is particularly evident in Nikki Minaj’s ‘super base’ music video. Other female
rap artists that show more autonomous empowerment that is not highly dependant
on sexiness are Queen Latifah and Lauryn Hill; however their popularity has not
reached that high levels that hyper- sexualised female rappers like Lil Kim,
Foxy Brown and Nikki Minaj has. This is because sex eroticism is seen as apart
of the part of the dominant patriarchal order (Mulvey 1975).
Rap/ Hip-hop video effects or repeat of history
Storey’s (2009) notes
mention that feminists claim that popular culture plays an important role in
patriarchal society. In other words patriarchal ideology is widely spread
through popular culture that majority of people gather from their news,
information and entertainment. What people gather from their popular culture
entertainment and news are their dominant culture’s gender roles, norm and
definitions of themselves (ibid).
Through entertainment of
rap/Hip hop music videos women and men learn that the dominant culture’s delimitation
and role of womanhood is sex appeal and subjectivity to men. Hooks (2006) talks
about the hyper-sexualisation of the black female body in particular however (Unknown,
Dec 2009) mentions that despite hyper- sexualisation of the female body is now
apparent in all other colours of wom History of the hyper- sexualised female
body dates back to the days of slavery when black woman are stated (Nykol, date
unknown) to have offered sex to their owners in return of less strenuous tasks.
Just after slavery was
abolished saarjite/ sara Benjamin as known as Hottentots Venus is mentioned (
Maseko, 2011) to be a woman who accepted payment of money for a public
exhibition of her naked with particular fascination to her large buttocks. Female
rap artist Nikki Minaj and video vixens are also very popular for her big
buttocks and curvy body; this is revealing of the historical objectification
and representations of black women as sexual savages that are normally scantly
dressed because they are immodest and sexually out of control.
In reality many women have
been reported to go through great lengths and at times dangerous measures to
have the very big buttocks and curvaceous bodies just like the ones they see in
these videos. One unfortunate example of this is a buttock implants surgery
that went seriously wrong for an aspiring young video vixen. She is reported to
have died from the cosmetic surgery.
Hooks (2006) points out that
apart from the hyper sexualisation, colour coding/ the colour cast system is
also idealised in the rap/ hip hop music videos. Evidence of this can be
observed in the presence of a large amount of black woman with lighter skin
tones prefferebly with long and straighter hair in the videos. This is because
lighter skin toned black women are viewed as not too different to the white
community and therefore deemed acceptable. The very dark skin toned women are
mentioned ( Hooks, 2006) to be rarely present in the video and this sadly
affects society as it reinforce racial segregation in society as a whole and
between the black community itself.
Colour coding in the rap/hip
hop music videos is also said ( Blay, 2012) to have an effect on some black men
because they are familiar with only seeing the lighter skin toned black women
they tend to find the darker skinned toned ones as less desirable and
acceptable. This affect some black women tend to think that in order to be
acceptable to society they have to be light skinned and with that they resort
to skin bleaching so as to attain lighter skin tones ( ibid ). Apart from self
hated and colonial mentality skin bleaching is associated with skin cancer.
The future ….
Despite all the negativity
of misogyny, subordination, subjectivity and segregation that is evidenced in
Rap/hip-hop music videos and all its negative effects. Hooks’ ( 2006)
commentary it that the American society’s obsession with transgression is part
of the reason for prevalent negativity in the videos. Transgression is said
(ibid) to be associated with blackness the young white consumers are like to be
associated with. In particular hyper sexualisation of women in the videos as
mentioned earlier is consistent because sex sells and regardless of the
negative connotations this specifically puts on black women’s image and place
in society ( a capitalist society where all that matters is profit and nothing
comes in its way).
Below is a like of a video created
to expose the culprits of the imagery and ideology in the Rap/hip hop music
industry with a desired flipside to its current state. Its reality is a hopeful
and much needed revolution to end the impact of the negative aspects in rap/hip
hop music videos.
http://youtu.be/TWfgj31NFGE
Clique the fem redux
Word count 1,680
Reference list
Hooks, B. 2006
Maseko,
Z. 2011, The Life and Times of Sara Baartman: "The Hottentots Venus" accessed April 2013 available at http://icarusfilms.com/new99/hottento.html
Crunktastic,
April 2013, Five Ways Talib Kweli Can
Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop accessed in May 2013,
available at http://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2013/04/05/five-ways-talib-kweli-can-become-a-better-ally-to-women-in-hip-hop/
Gotti et al, Dec 2007, How women are portrayed
in rap videos accessed in April 2013, available at http://youtu.be/r2q5zlgkKas
Mulvey, L. Autumn 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Available: http:
www.jahsonic.com/VPNC.html. date accessed April 2013.
Sturken, M and
Cartwright, L. 2009, The practices of looking: An introduction to visual culture,
Oxford
Nykol, A. Date
unknown, Blacks representations in the media, Available: http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=176
date accessed April 2013
Unknown, Dec 2009
Clique the fem redux, Unknown date, Gangasta
rap radically and refreshingly redefined, accessed in April 2013 available at http://fem-men-ist.blogspot.co.uk/
and http://youtu.be/TWfgj31NFGE
No comments:
Post a Comment