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| Addicted to misogyny? Music videos still don't get what women really want | Addicted to misogyny? Music videos still don't get what women really want |
| (14 days later) | |
| Watching Dizzee Rascal's new song/video, you could argue that we're living through a full-scale revival of the Addicted to Love treatment. I was in nappies when Robert Palmer's chart-topping video came out in 1986, but I warmed to the song as a youngster. I enjoyed the flashy brass, the big, hammering drums, the tension and swagger in Palmer's voice and the frisson of release on the chorus, "Might as well face it…". I also loved the video's mannequin-like backing band, all hard, unsmiling faces and chic, monochrome curves. But Addicted to Love is a bit like the Police's Every Step You Take – a song you enjoy until you're old enough to re-evaluate the lyrics and find them wanting. | Watching Dizzee Rascal's new song/video, you could argue that we're living through a full-scale revival of the Addicted to Love treatment. I was in nappies when Robert Palmer's chart-topping video came out in 1986, but I warmed to the song as a youngster. I enjoyed the flashy brass, the big, hammering drums, the tension and swagger in Palmer's voice and the frisson of release on the chorus, "Might as well face it…". I also loved the video's mannequin-like backing band, all hard, unsmiling faces and chic, monochrome curves. But Addicted to Love is a bit like the Police's Every Step You Take – a song you enjoy until you're old enough to re-evaluate the lyrics and find them wanting. |
| Palmer flatters himself that he knows the woman of the song's gaze better than she knows herself – that he can sense great, untapped reserves of desire smothered behind her mask of primness, and that he will liberate her with his manly intuition and physical prowess. Sound familiar? That's because Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines – the song that launched a thousand angry/brilliant/rubbish parodies by enraged feminists and clever queers – is Addicted to Love reborn. Why hasn't someone made a mashup yet? | Palmer flatters himself that he knows the woman of the song's gaze better than she knows herself – that he can sense great, untapped reserves of desire smothered behind her mask of primness, and that he will liberate her with his manly intuition and physical prowess. Sound familiar? That's because Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines – the song that launched a thousand angry/brilliant/rubbish parodies by enraged feminists and clever queers – is Addicted to Love reborn. Why hasn't someone made a mashup yet? |
| Songs with lyrics like "You like to think that you're immune to the stuff" and "Another kiss is all you need", not to mention Thicke's "But you're a good girl" and "Just let me liberate you" are part of a tradition that operates in a morally grey area. That grey area sits between praising women who acquiesce to their repressed, carnal desires and bragging about "good girls" who surrender to their inner sluts when faced with the artist's supreme, overwhelming, stud masculinity. This latter idea is hella insulting, because it robs the female protagonists of any real autonomy ("Your mind is not your own"). But the kernel of truth in these songs is this: women live in a world that objectifies and oversexualises our bodies, then shames us when we dare to take back control and sexual agency. The anti-porn, sex-negative feminist brigade are partly to blame for perpetuating this predicament, something Savages singer Jehnny Beth spoke about with Pitchfork earlier this year. Pitchfork observed: "Although [Beth] agrees with the [feminist] movement's aims for equality, she has misgivings about its wider motivations and is fascinated when women put a feminist reading on Savages." | Songs with lyrics like "You like to think that you're immune to the stuff" and "Another kiss is all you need", not to mention Thicke's "But you're a good girl" and "Just let me liberate you" are part of a tradition that operates in a morally grey area. That grey area sits between praising women who acquiesce to their repressed, carnal desires and bragging about "good girls" who surrender to their inner sluts when faced with the artist's supreme, overwhelming, stud masculinity. This latter idea is hella insulting, because it robs the female protagonists of any real autonomy ("Your mind is not your own"). But the kernel of truth in these songs is this: women live in a world that objectifies and oversexualises our bodies, then shames us when we dare to take back control and sexual agency. The anti-porn, sex-negative feminist brigade are partly to blame for perpetuating this predicament, something Savages singer Jehnny Beth spoke about with Pitchfork earlier this year. Pitchfork observed: "Although [Beth] agrees with the [feminist] movement's aims for equality, she has misgivings about its wider motivations and is fascinated when women put a feminist reading on Savages." |
| "They tell me they think pornography is bad for women and assume I'm going to understand,' she says. 'The thing is, I watch a lot of pornography. It's been very important for me, to liberate myself from the pressure of romanticism, the myth of a woman's pleasure." | "They tell me they think pornography is bad for women and assume I'm going to understand,' she says. 'The thing is, I watch a lot of pornography. It's been very important for me, to liberate myself from the pressure of romanticism, the myth of a woman's pleasure." |
| We've been taught that we need men's gaze, prompting and permission to enjoy ourselves, and it is this tension that Thicke exploits in Blurred Lines. | We've been taught that we need men's gaze, prompting and permission to enjoy ourselves, and it is this tension that Thicke exploits in Blurred Lines. |
| Unlike some people, I didn't find the song "rape-y". But the video is not as easy to defend. The nudity of female stars compared with their male co-stars is clearly problematic, and it's a laughable idea that a woman's sexuality is purely base and primal ("you're an animal, baby it's in your nature") while Thicke's is presumably more sophisticated. We can also take umbrage with the infantalisation in both the language and the props. Case in point: that rocking horse. (Eww.) | Unlike some people, I didn't find the song "rape-y". But the video is not as easy to defend. The nudity of female stars compared with their male co-stars is clearly problematic, and it's a laughable idea that a woman's sexuality is purely base and primal ("you're an animal, baby it's in your nature") while Thicke's is presumably more sophisticated. We can also take umbrage with the infantalisation in both the language and the props. Case in point: that rocking horse. (Eww.) |
| But Blurred Lines is a mutual dance: "The way you grab me/Must wanna get nasty/Go ahead, get at me". Even if Thicke's indulgent, self-congratulatory display of playa masculinity is OTT and full of misogynist images, the topic of consent in Blurred Lines is explicit. Consent is central to Dizzee's song, too, even if the title codifies casual sex as "bad". Unlike the smug, pseudo-knowingness and predatory vibes in Palmer's hit, Dizzee's love interest is an independent, sexually empowered woman, out to get kicks on her own terms. He is both bowled over and impressed by her frankness, and frames their tryst as shame-free ("That's ok / ain't gotta explain / nothing wrong with sharing love, its just a exchange"). Unfortunately, like Thicke, Dizzee is also a victim of the good girl/bad girl trap: "And I know you're not a hoe, you don't usually play / you would never just leave, you would usually stay / never have a one-night stand." At times, the women in the video for Something Really Bad stare at the camera face-on, like they're squaring up. Blurred Lines director Diane Martel employed the same technique: | But Blurred Lines is a mutual dance: "The way you grab me/Must wanna get nasty/Go ahead, get at me". Even if Thicke's indulgent, self-congratulatory display of playa masculinity is OTT and full of misogynist images, the topic of consent in Blurred Lines is explicit. Consent is central to Dizzee's song, too, even if the title codifies casual sex as "bad". Unlike the smug, pseudo-knowingness and predatory vibes in Palmer's hit, Dizzee's love interest is an independent, sexually empowered woman, out to get kicks on her own terms. He is both bowled over and impressed by her frankness, and frames their tryst as shame-free ("That's ok / ain't gotta explain / nothing wrong with sharing love, its just a exchange"). Unfortunately, like Thicke, Dizzee is also a victim of the good girl/bad girl trap: "And I know you're not a hoe, you don't usually play / you would never just leave, you would usually stay / never have a one-night stand." At times, the women in the video for Something Really Bad stare at the camera face-on, like they're squaring up. Blurred Lines director Diane Martel employed the same technique: |
| "I wanted to deal with the misogynist, funny lyrics in a way where the girls were going to overpower the men. Look at Emily Ratajkowski's performance; it's very, very funny and subtly ridiculing. That's what is fresh to me. It also forces the men to feel playful and not at all like predators. I directed the girls to look into the camera, this is very intentional and they do it most of the time; they are in the power position." | "I wanted to deal with the misogynist, funny lyrics in a way where the girls were going to overpower the men. Look at Emily Ratajkowski's performance; it's very, very funny and subtly ridiculing. That's what is fresh to me. It also forces the men to feel playful and not at all like predators. I directed the girls to look into the camera, this is very intentional and they do it most of the time; they are in the power position." |
| Martel believes the peacock egotism in Blurred Lines was explicit enough to tip the sexism over into self-ridicule. She has a point. Who takes a man who uses inflatable balloons to big up his own penis size seriously? But whether or not we agree with Martel, the idea that women need men to liberate them, or give them permission to engage in the joys of promiscuous, carefree sex, is played out. | Martel believes the peacock egotism in Blurred Lines was explicit enough to tip the sexism over into self-ridicule. She has a point. Who takes a man who uses inflatable balloons to big up his own penis size seriously? But whether or not we agree with Martel, the idea that women need men to liberate them, or give them permission to engage in the joys of promiscuous, carefree sex, is played out. |
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