Awsome Assignment 3

Awesome Assignment #3: Part Two

        My group had to watch and analyze RnB music videos. The goal of this project was for us to examine the power relationships and gender roles in music videos since the majority of them have a “hidden” message, which portrays women and men in different ways; in opposite ways, dominant and non-dominant. Rhythm and Blues, is often abbreviated to R&B and RnB, and is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940's. In the mid-1950's, after this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, the term "R&B" referred to music styles that developed from, or incorporated electric blues, as well as gospel and soul music. By the 1970s, Rhythm and Blues was used as a blanket term for soul and funk music and by the 1980's, a newer style of R&B developed, becoming known as "Contemporary R&B". As these changes happened during this time period, the role of men and women in the songs also changed. Women appeared more sexual, controlled whereas men where the “pack leaders”. While watching the music videos we noticed that stereotypical portrayals of masculinity and the objectification of women were prevalent throughout R&B.

        The main channels that we used to watch our music videos were YouTube, MTV and VEVO since there are unlimited amount of music videos that we could watch. We focused on artistic such as Chris Brown, Rihanna, Kanye West, Usher, Nicky Minaj, etc. While I was watching the music videos alone I’ve noticed that in the majority of them, men are dominant while women are the main recipients. I’ve also notice that women outnumber men and they are seen as sexual objects with the purpose to please men. According to my coding sheets male actors lead in four categories: Dominance, Implicit Aggression, Aggression with Sexuality and Explicit Sexuality whereas women are the recipient in those categories. On the other hand women lead in Explicit Aggression, Objectification and Implicit Sexuality in which men are the recipients. All my findings combined show that women have a higher number of different roles, totaling 29(56%) whereas men have only 23(44%) instances of different role calculation. Women also lead as recipients of those different role totaling 24(59%) whereas men have 17(41%). My findings combined with the finding of other group member are not much different. The percentages are quite similar. The roles are led by women of total 124(54%) whereas men have 106(46%). Recipient are also led by women, 110(63%) whereas men have 65(37%). From all these findings we can conclude that the difference in role between men and women is huge and that women have the “weak” and more passive role whereas men are active and “strong”.

         Going over all the questions and arguments of Sommers-Flanagan and her colleagues I’ve realized that they are quite similar since the answer in most of them is well-known “men are up, women are down”. Our results in our research show that our findings are same as the findings of Sommers-Flanagan and that is men are portrayed and expressing dominance, by being around multiple women. Furthermore they are aggressive towards other men and women at the same time. We found some videos in which women are dominant and aggressive but they do not express those actions as men do. Previously I’ve wrote about the history of RnB and the changes that happened. Music videos used to be less aggressive and women where less sexually available and active. Just as in almost every music category, in the past two decades there have been tremendous changes in RnB. People required more entertainment, the artists in order to provide that they changed their performance; made it more man-centric and the number of women appearing half-naked in the music videos increased. In my opinion I don’t think this situation is getting any better because what was considered taboo in the past is now normal and what is now considered taboo, in the future will be normal.