MUSIC VIDEOS, YOUNG VIEWERS AND POPULAR CULTURE. (Prt.1)

There is hardly any need to argue that music has become the universal phenomenon of the present day generation. In a brand child study, it was discovered that about 50% of wired urban teenagers often download music from the Internet.  Yousman, B. et al (2007) identified that since MTV debuted in 1981 music videos have become a central part of our popular culture…Looking closely at the stories music videos tell about both male and female sexuality, provides us with insights into our own identities, and helps us understand what the culture teaches about what it means to be a “normal” man or a woman.

Roberts and Christenson (2002) noted:

 that of all media products, music is the most valued among older children and adolescents suggesting that music and television are important to young people’s identities. Consequently, since the 1980’s, when explicit song lyrics and music videos containing violent imagery become popular with music artists, music television has been criticized for targeting this at the young ‘susceptible’ viewer.

MUSIC AND YOUTHS: USAGE AND EFFECTS

Works have been done on the impact and influence of music on the temper and tone of society culture. There is no place where the discussion between high and popular culture is more predominant and pointed out. Undeniably, the type of music offered by a media or medium largely shows the audience it aims at. Music can pass across and influence people’s behaviors and feelings as it both speaks to particular generations and crosses generational lines.  “The youths are the major participants and audience of musical programmes which makes them most affected and influenced but little or no attention is placed on this and not all parents care about the kind of musical programmes their children watch”.

In the year 2000, the Recording Industry Association of America observed that, as the world universal form of communication, music touches everyone in the globe to the tune of US $40 billion annually. Some significant media types, institutions, and practices that are there to ensure the satisfaction of the industry and the audience of popular music, i.e. which stand between yet connect two: the club scene, concerts and concert tours; music festivals; popular music or in film; the music press; and, most important of all, radio and music video. All these forms mediate the music, creating diegetic link between performer, text, and consumer. In various ways, each form operates to create audiences, to fuel individual fantasy and pleasure, and to create musical icons and cultural myths.

Music is usually viewed as one of the distinctive part of popular culture, images, visual and aural of people and societies from the ancient to this point in time contain music, notwithstanding if the ballads of the songs are old. As a unique industry that collaborates with different media organisations and platforms amongst which are radio, TV, internet and motion pictures, Professor Eric Rothenbuhler and John Strick of the University of Iowa wrote that:

Recorded music is “a producer of cultural goods, working in what may be the most uncertain, and the most volatile of media business”. they continued: “consumer taste in recorded music is more ephemeral than consumer taste in newspaper, magazines, popular novels, TV shows, or movies and they also have more options of expressing that taste…yet the industry has succeeded, attracting consumer dollars and time at equivalent levels”  

In learning and communication culture, music has always played a vital role, young people learn mostly from what they watch, hear and from role models. It has been observed that in more than thirty five years, a number of children have learned effectively from their television through music, fast paced-animation and the combination of words. Having a sharing mutual musical sensitivity between the generation in a household or family is most likely to be a gratifying experience.

Music videos and lyrics of this century can be argued to have a great amount of influence on youths in different ways because it portrays the use drugs, alcohol and sex as acceptable, customary, and exalting it also. According to O’Toole, K. (1997), Its content show women wearing scanty and provocative outfits, promoting pre and extramarital affairs, it also contains gangsters behaviors that is easily copied by youth, the use of weapons, violent behaviors such as suicide and murder as part of daily life, they learn that they need to grow up and face a actuality they are not responsible for knowing.

The high level of attention paid to the watching of TV and music videos is responsible for the beginning of the use of alcohol amongst adolescent, many artistes especially rappers glorify sex and the use of drugs and alcohol; they sing and rap about sexual acts, violence, smoking weed, drinking forty’s and popping pills and the youths are paying attention and copying these acts, in the media today, lyrics like these have become rampant with artiste like Eminem, Jay Z, Wiz Khalifa, Marilyn Manson, Dr Dre, Drake just to mention a few and most of these music videos, especially rap, have been condemned over the years for contents that portray disrespect and hatred for women, violence and drug use. Adolescents take music to be important and they cannot be understood without looking at how they relate with it and how they use it in their daily lives.

Music changes and strengthens their temperaments, makes up their use of words and language e.g slang's  takes over the way they relate, talk and creates and dominates the atmosphere when socializing. The style portrayed in these music videos determines the gathering and gang they identify with, and the music artistes also serve as role models and they copy their dressing and behavior  It was also noted that music has a way of affecting attitude towards studies and causes ear damage but this type of effects do not generate instant reaction as much as sexual acts and violence even though they might have as much negative effect in their growth.

Music videos amongst other forms of music have shifted from just being a promotional tool for artiste influencing and reproducing the culture of young audience. In as much as there is a difference between the type of words, categories, and viewers, music videos keep promoting the American conventional standards of sex and gender in a particular form, Majority of these music videos are flooded with erotic content which to a large extent concentrates on the masculine view and male desire for sexual pleasure. The body of the female is mostly used as objects to demonstrate the male’s sexual wants and dominance over sexual conditions. The female physique is frequently sexually agitated more than the male physic which can be said to be due to the major concentration of the videos that portray a male sexual motivation and conventional masculine sexual penchants (Ward, et al 2006).

Music video platforms such as MTV, Trace, SounCity, BET etc. just to mention a few are mediums through which adolescents and young adults frequently gain access to what can be argued to be ill-advised information that creates and endorses sex and gender favoritism or bias, because they are being exposed to male concentrated sexual content and gender bias. As Turner, J. S. (2005) noted, the portrayal of females in the study of the content in music videos is very crucial in the understanding of adolescents and young adult’s perception of their physical and sexual personal formation alongside their opinion of each other. It is therefore important to trace the revolving trend of music videos in young popular culture, where the youths are being made aware of sex and gender, which is being adopted as facts and in turn used in reacting to the environment/setting.

In both male and female music videos, sexuality is being abused to stimulate or uphold and identity and entice diverse audience. In a study by Andsager et al (2003) sexual content and violence portrayed in music videos where researched on based on three component topologies, the first deals with “sex as metamorphosis”, it states that “the idea of using sexuality as metamorphosis is aimed at creating the illusion that an artist has evolved into a different being, generally a more mature and edgier version of his or her former self”. Still, this mutation more than maturity or womanhood, reveals more overt sexuality. Andsager picked Britney Spears who the media identifies as the princess of pop, as yardstick of making use of sex as “metamorphosis” in her video ‘I’m a slave 4 you’ in which she wore a scarf as a top, exposing her well-built chest and cleavage, the sweat on her body, humid hair and seductive dance routine proves the notion that Britney was showcasing her sexuality and peddling sex rather than maturity which brings about the issue of when maturity is being camouflaged for sex the audience tend to get the wrong views of maturity/adulthood.  Young females often have access to their preferred young artiste who is fast “metamorphosing” into grownups through sex and sexuality.

Another component, i.e. (The second component) in the “topology is Sex as a Fantasy Fulfillment : it is said to be the use of sexuality in ways that fulfill a fantasy for everyone. The ways women are being portrayed in videos of both male and female artiste are in various forms of sexual make-believe that are constantly typecast of female’s character or role. Andsager pointed out that some women are consistent with a particular identity but that notwithstanding, females tend to show various fantasy roles than males. Some music videos, like Bottoms Up by Trey Songs, portray women as items and medals to watch in this video, women where shown in what seem like transparent boxes and had their hands tied up with ropes while dancing seductively. Artists like Rick Ross, Timbaland, Jay-Z, Ace Hood, Lil Wayne, T-Pain, Drake, T.I etc. portray themselves with class and wealth and the ability to control women and they try to maintain this identity all through. Hitherto most female musicians prefer to embrace the role of putting on seductive and sexualized clothing, creating an idea that they have what it takes to be desired which at the end of it all is meant for the pleasure of the male.

The final topology is “Sex as Power”, this expands the study of French (1987), he describes that artiste make use of sexuality to express “power”. This is majorly found amongst the male artiste who usually show their strength and control over women and their physique through sex in music videos, an illustration is Bow Wow’s video “You can get it all” in which most of the females sought to satisfy him all dressed in bikini’s revealing their body parts while he was rapping.

Daily exposure to the sexual images in music videos can be said to be an influential socializing tool, exposing adolescents to possible wrong and destructive information of their personal sexuality. Unfortunately, there is hardly anything done to reduce the enormous overstated and deceptive sexual content viewed in music videos by young people. TV images have therefore become the medium through which attitudes, communal, social and behavioral are learnt without any aid....(To be continued)