Controversial Music Videos

There are some music video's that make it clear that there will be explicit content within it by the title, such as Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up. Due to the title of the song and the contents of the music video, the video was taken off the internet and subsequently leading to the music video becoming immensely popular. However there are also music videos that cause controversy because of the content even if it isn't deemed explicit. An example of this is Madonna's 'Like A Prayer'. Many people found this offensive due to its take on religion. In the music video, Madonna is seen;
1.) Kissing an African-American Jesus
2.) Dancing in front of a burning cross
3.) Showing an excessive amount of skin in a church
The combination of all these factors led to this video being controversial.

Another example of a controversial music video is Nirvana's song 'Heart Shaped Box'. This music video is deemed controversial for many reasons. For example in the second verse it features a girl in a white robe and peaked cap (Similar to the KKK uniform) reaching for human fetuses hanging from a tree. It is not hard to see why this song would be deemed controversial.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hello!

As the academic year comes to an end, a new one begins and with a new year comes a new course. This year in media studies we will be creating a music video for a song of our choice. This will include; planning the music video, creating CD covers, creating a website for the artist and then filming, editing and releasing the music video. Because of the range of different platforms I will be exploring during this course, I will be able to show creativity in new ways as I will not just be focusing on one specific area, unlike last year where we focused on film, I will also be focusing on different forms of advertisement. I am looking forward to this course as I enjoy watching music videos as over time music videos have changed from forms of advertisement for promoting a song to an art of their own as they can show a narrative with some songs becoming small movies (Lady Gaga - G.U.Y. - An ARTPOP Film, Fall Out Boy - This Ain't A Scene, Its An Arm...
Read more

CD Case Analysis

Image
American Beauty/ American Psycho is the sixth studio album from American rock band Fall Out Boy released on January 16th 2015. The cover of the album conforms to the the typical conventions of rock album covers as the band is not featured on the cover. This is usually because the band wants the audience to focus on the music and the meanings of the songs rather than the appearance of the band. The imagery on the front cover of the album is a young boy wearing a blue and black vest in front of a house. The dark/ punk face paint on the boys face creates symbolism with his face only being half painted with stars and stripes (similar to that on the American flag) which links to the name of the album 'American Beauty/ American Psycho'. This type of face paint often associated with rock/ punk music.The boys expressionless face and dark clothing also adds to the dark atmosphere of the album as these are often associated with rock music. The text used on the front cover of the alb...
Read more

The Male Gaze

Image
The term 'Male Gaze' was first coined by Laura Mulvey in her essay 'Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema' (1975) where the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. This can be shown when the camera focuses on women's bodies. The theory shows how women are often deprived of a human identity in film are often relegated to the status of objects used for the gratification of men with women in the audience having to watch from a males perspective. Some theorists have also noted how the sexualisation of the female body often occurs in situations where it has nothing to do with the product being advertised. Mulvey's essay states that the role of a woman in a narrative has two functions 1.As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view 2.As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view Mulvey believes that the 'Male Gaze' leads to hegemonic ideologies within society. This is because of the a lot of t...
Read more