music videos... hmm

In the early weeks of class I was perusing popular music videos on YouTube, and I came across this gem, "Hotel Room Service" by Pitbull. I took Professor Becker's TV Criticism and Aesthetic class spring semester last year, and we spent a week discussing the aesthetic of music videos. We watched Kanye West's Golddiger video and identified the target audience for music videos as males between the ages of 15 and 25. Thus, popular music videos completely sexually objectify women. This is an example of women as spectacle, of voyeurism and scopophilia. Many of these videos have scantily clad, gyrating women in nondescript locations. If men are in the scene, they are in control of the situation as the women move around them, with visual attention directed at the women. In "Hotel Room Service" all of the women are "asking for it." They beckon Pitbull, who promptly advances on them. Even the hotel employees are scantily clad as ever, getting in on the action. This modern-day example of women as spectacle is definitely a negative one, as women are portayed beyond simple "to-be-looked-at-ness" as sexual objects of fantasy for male veiwers, on-screen objects of voyeurism. Even in videos for female performers, the precedent is to show women as attractive sexual objects with skin showing and seductive faces. It is incredible that -young acts such as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, as sexualized performers as they are, are accepted.