Watching Pop, Sex and Videotape with Annie Lennox has
spurred some thoughts, and although I think though the premise of the program
was interesting, the Helen Lovejoy 'think of the children!' approach was both
typical and damaging, and cut off a huge chunk of the audience and those who should face some accountability- male consumers.
Sex sells,
music artists in particular have always been keen to practice this expression
of sexual autonomy in a western culture where it is legal- and a freedom - to
express adult sensuality.
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'The Purge' teen(?) girl
© Universal |
This is where the term 'adult' is key.
This theme was something I noticed firstly in cinema, in
the '2.4 children' Hollywood construct, the teenage girl will always be
very good-looking, played by an adult actress, presented as 'secretly' sexually
adept and dressed in some kind of altered provocative school uniform. You can
bet on it. This 'sexy schoolgirl' paradigm has been carried out for years in a
muted way (*cough* st trinians), but the 'sexy' subject in mass western culture does seem to be
getting progressively younger.
I would like to focus mostly on music, and while this will not be another blog post about the evils of Robin
Thicke, it will be a comment on a summer 2013 'trend' of infantalising (making an adult woman act and look - as much as possible - like a young child) and then
fetishising them, shown most overtly Dianne Martel's classics
Blurred lines and We can't stop, examples listed here :
*Miley is dressed in a torn up baby-grow-like onesie (traded for
shortie dungarees in the VMA performance);
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'Blurred Lines'
©Interscope |
*Orally-fixated symbolism in We Cant Stop: lollypops,
bubblgum, 'tongue-out' expression
*The Blurred Lines females have smoke blown in their faces and
their hair played with while remaining vacant and passive
*They are then left mute, nonspeaking unless
it's an animalistic 'meow' or 'roar';
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'We Can't Stop'
©RCA |
*They are also not dressed overtly sexually in a way that
would characterise womanly sexuality (like lingere), but infant-like complete
nakedness
*The movements of both We can't stop and Blurred lines' focus' are
child-like: stomping around, twirling, odd little dances (with the exception of
the twerking- ha)
*Both the Blurred Lines females and Miley are surrounded by toys and teddies;
*Over-use of childlike facial expressions in both
*The physicality of both sexualised focus' is extremely young
Something I've often wondered is if the psuado-teenagers were topless, but more
similar in figure to say Kim Kardashian or Beyonce- would the video still be
seen as 'a bit of fun', or soft porn? My argument is that the video only works when the
subject is adolescent or androgynous, with a very young, predominanly white
model-like physique.
This begs the question of how the subject matter can be
appropriate or artsy with an adolescent-like female focus, but not for another
type of woman, and why this new-found idealism for the very young has made its
way so seamlessly into modern society. Children can not be considered in charge
of their sexuality: they are physically weak, emotionally vulnerable and most
notably, voiceless in society. Reducing women to small children is
encouraging peadophilic fetishism in a landscape where Rhianna, Nicki and
Britney are able to twerk in a thong covered in glitter - as adult women - with
an absence of moral outrage (and IMO, rightly so).
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Yummy
©Interscope |
It is easy to dismiss this trend in the music industry as the last
taboo, that sticking out with a new form of fringe sexuality is a marketing
ploy, but the response to the videos was only met with (in Miley's case)
slut-shaming, and unmatched salivation from seemingly intelligent and
socially-aware adult men (Blurred Lines)- not the warranted questioning or
disgust at the weirdly chilldlike women.
This is why pop culture is an adult's issue.
Tweet me @bakebakebaker
BAKER
xoxoxo
