Abstract
Music videos are popular, frequently aimed at young adult audiences, and easily accessible through online platforms. They often portray specific versions of masculinities and femininities and are increasingly linked to the alcohol industry. This research explored how masculinity, femininity, and alcohol consumption are constructed within four mainstream popular music videos. Critical multimodal discourse analysis was employed to systematically examine dominant meanings across various modes of the videos (lyrics, sound, video, and editing). Two major discourses were identified, namely, extreme consumption and freedom, and together these created “playboy” and “woman-as-object” subject positions. These positions are discussed with reference to hegemonic masculinity, postfeminist culture, and capitalist consumerism and considered in terms of the complex ways in which influential postfeminist and hegemonic discourses obscure the operations of power.
The pop music video provides an important perspective on contemporary cultural values, offering “up a distillation of the ways in which contemporary culture perceives itself through cultural production” (Railton and Watson 2005, 52). It is strongly associated with youth culture; young people are the target audience for pop music and are major consumers of popular music, listening to an average of 2.5 hours of music each day in the United States (Rideout, Foehr, and Roberts 2010). The “video turn” in music has resulted in a proliferation of audiovisual musical material easily and readily available on online platforms such as YouTube which are highly utilized by teenagers and young people (Hesmondhalgh 2009; Magaudda 2011). Music is integral to teenagers’ identities (North, Hargreaves, and O’Neill 2000; P. S. Campbell, Connell, and Beegle 2007), and pop music provides meanings around gender, gender relations, norms, and values.
Researchers have examined the lyrics in popular music and found repetitive sexual and gendered “scripts” and misogynistic portrayals of women. Weitzer and Kubrin (2009) analyzed the lyrics of 203 rap songs from 1992, when gangsta rap began to flourish, until 2000, a time when the rap industry became increasingly commercialized. They concluded that the lyrics were essentialist and normative, “portraying men and women as inherently different and unequal” (p. 24). Similarly, Bretthauer, Zimmerman, and Banning (2007) found themes relating to men’s power and women’s objectification. McFarland (2003) identified misogyny and hypermasculine machismo as key constructions within 470 Chicano rap lyrics, and in a recent lyrical content analysis of 527 songs by black artists, Avery et al. (2016) found portrayals of black men as hypermasculine, with attendant values of competition, materialism, and competitiveness. They explained the potential influence of these lyrics on black men through the mechanisms of hegemonic masculinity and social cognitive theory. Research analyzing popular music videos has found similar themes, including the sexual objectification of women, misogyny, and materialism, particularly within rhythm and blues (R&B), pop and rap music videos (Aubrey and Frisby 2011; Conrad, Dixon, and Zhang 2009; Wallis 2011). Hunter’s (2011) analysis of the forty-one best-selling rap videos in 2007–2008 highlighted notions of conspicuous consumption, marketing, and entrepreneurship as well as strip club imagery and “the racialized performance of pornography in hip-hop where men of color are represented as sexually aggressive and women of color are represented as objects for male pleasure and ridicule” (p. 26). Hunter argues that in addition to conveying caricatures of black women’s sexuality, these videos demonstrate conspicuous consumption to such an extent that products take center stage.
Many artists, especially those within R&B, soul, blues, or jazz, have sung about alcohol. A significant increase in alcohol, tobacco, and other drug content occurred in popular music from 1957 to 2007 (Hall, West, and Neeley 2012). From 1979 to 1997, rap songs referencing alcohol increased fivefold, with the overwhelming majority painting alcohol use in a positive light (Herd 2005). Other US-based content analyses have shown this trend continuing. In an analysis of the lyrical content of the 279 most popular songs of 2005, Primack et al. (2008) revealed that 23.7 percent portrayed alcohol use, with the majority of these portraying it positively. Substance use was “frequently motivated by peer acceptance and sex” (p. 169). Specific brands are also referenced 25 percent of the time that alcohol is mentioned within songs in the United States, leading the researchers to postulate increasing ties between the liquor and music industries. In the UK, Hardcastle et al. (2013) noted a steep rise in alcohol-related content in popular music between 1981 and 2011. In all these, alcohol use, especially in rap and hip-hop, was most often linked to positive outcomes and behaviors, including wealth, sex, luxury items, and partying.
Music videos are increasingly used to market alcohol to young people (Burkhalter and Thornton 2014; Collinson et al. 2014; Cranwell et al. 2015) and may be more effective than traditional alcohol marketing approaches because videos masquerade as art (Vernallis 2004). Alcohol marketing influences young people’s alcohol consumption (Babor 2009, 2010; Lin et al. 2012) and often uses discourses that link alcohol with gender (Gee and Jackson 2012; Herd 2014; Law 1997; Wenner and Jackson 2009). Analyses of music videos have found that alcohol use was present in one-fifth to one-third, with rap and hip-hop videos twice as likely as any other genre to portray drinking; such portrayals are often linked to humor (Gruber et al. 2005). Burkhalter and Thornton (2014) argue that product placement in music videos is a deliberate marketing strategy. They identified alcohol marketing in 9.3 percent of hip-hop videos, for purposes similar to advertising: to serve “as a mechanism for transferring cultural meaning from brands to consumers” (p. 369).
Ratele et al. (2010) used rap music videos containing both hegemonic and marginal representations of masculinity to facilitate discussions among South African teenage males. In response to viewing these videos, these teenagers employed strongly gendered discourses to talk about alcohol and constructed masculinity as the performance of a set of activities that are permissible and in opposition to constructions of femininity and homosexuality. Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) consider hegemonic masculinity as “more socially central, or more associated with authority and social power, than other [masculinities]” (p. 846). It “presumes the subordination of other masculinities” (p. 846). Research on both music videos and alcohol consumption demonstrate hegemonic masculinities in operation. Alcohol tolerance has been seen as a way of embodying heterosexual masculinity. It is often constructed relationally, through an “othering” of women and homosexual men who are positioned as unable to “handle” large quantities of alcohol (Peralta 2007). International research attests to the ubiquity of dichotomous constructions privileging heterosexual masculinity in a range of drinking contexts (e.g., H. Campbell 2000; Hinote and Webber 2012; Mullen et al. 2007; Peralta 2007; Ratele et al. 2010). Although challenges to this gendered order have been observed, drinking remains linked to heterosexuality and tolerance, even when loss of bodily control has been celebrated, as for instance, in European stag party tourism (Thurnell-Read 2009, 2011a, 2011b, 2012).
Hegemonic masculinity is not a simplistic, unidirectional power dynamic, rather it perpetually faces challenges from “protest masculinities” (Connell 1995; Connell and Messerchmidt 2005). Power is not located in any one particular place but might be seen in the “flows and specific convergences and consolidations of talk, discourse, and attentions” (McRobbie 2004, 256). It is “constitutive and not merely prohibitive” (Beasley 2008, 756). And, as Foucault argued: “[power] traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourses” (Foucault, cited in Rabinow 1991, 61). Hegemony, then, as a mechanism of power, might depend for its legitimacy upon its capacity to produce pleasure. However, hegemonic masculinity, as a set of ideals or discourses, is not necessarily embodied by those who exercise dominance; “nonideal” men may be socially or financially dominant. Conversely, men who do actually embody the “manly” hegemonic ideals of mass media may actually represent a relatively subordinated minority (Beasley 2008).
In the music industry, record company executives or producers of music videos could be considered dominant men in that they wield financial resources without necessarily embodying ideals of hegemonic masculinity themselves. They might, however, recirculate ideals of hegemonic masculinity in music videos as a way of appealing to and uniting different men for commercial purposes. Produced largely in the United States, music videos have been exported as global popular culture. Railton and Watson (2011) assert that despite ostensible variety, there is a unity throughout versions of masculinity presented in music videos, which represents global masculine values within the current historic bloc.
Pop music videos absorb, repackage, and recirculate cultural values and position particular values as more legitimate over others. If, in a consumer culture, wealth accumulation characterizes progress (Braidotti 2005), then these might be reflected in dominant discourses provided through pop music videos. Indeed, Belle (2014) recognizes the potential freedom that rap music has to offer black men but also that “hip-hop is a microcosm of patriarchal and hegemonic ideals promoting male domination physically, financially, and lyrically” (p. 288). The aim of the current study was to examine popular music videos to identify the dominant meanings they portray around masculinity, femininity, and alcohol.
Method
Four pop music videos were selected based on content, popularity, and contemporaneousness. Content was specified as at least three lyrical references to alcohol and/or its effects and conspicuous visual consumption of alcohol or alcohol product placement. Popularity was established through a minimum of fifty million YouTube views. To ensure relevance, the music videos had to be produced within the previous five years (2010–2015). YouTube searches yielded a shortlist of twenty-two potential videos that met all selection criteria; the four music videos with over 150 million YouTube views and included in the US Billboard Hot 100 were selected for analysis. Each song and video are described below. Timber by Pitbull featuring Kesha: In 2014, Timber reached number one on thirty charts around the world, including the US Billboard, and finished at number eleven for the top 100 songs of that year. The video was nominated in MTV’s 2014 Video Music Awards for best collaboration category. Fourteen different writers/composers wrote Timber, including Armando Christian Perez and Kesha Sebert, who under the respective pseudonyms of Pitbull and Ke$ha are the performers (Warner/Chappell Music 2013). The song has earned the epithets: “faux-country dance” (Lipshutz 2014), “club-hoedown hybrid,” and “bro country” (Molanphy 2014). The country elements include aspects of instrumentation, melody, and lyrics. Its hip-hop elements include rap, and its dance music conventions include a “four-on-the-floor” rhythm and conventions such as tension building and “beat dropping.” Wild Ones by Flo Rida featuring Sia: Billboard’s Hot 100 list for the end of the year 2012 listed Wild Ones at number 11 based on radio play, sales, and streaming data over a year. Like Timber, it is a dance/club song beginning with the chorus or hook sung by a female artist (Sia), before the beat “drops” and the feature artist starts rapping. The beat includes a four on the floor electronic kick drum, and syncopated synthesizer track provides a pulsating feel. The video employs pseudodocumentary elements of Flo Rida engaging in a variety of “high adrenaline” activities in Dubai and Miami, rapidly cut with scenes of partying within a club. It also includes enhanced performance within a nightclub, and a mini-narrative of an airboat ride Flo Rida takes with his friends. The average shot length of the video is short (roughly 0.9 seconds). Sorry for Party Rocking (SFPR) by LMFAO: LMFAO (a common text abbreviation of laughed my fucking ass off) is a now defunct duo consisting of Stefan Gordy and his nephew Skyler Gordy, who perform under the stage names of Redfoo and SkyBlu, respectively (IMDb 2008). SFPR reached number forty-nine on the Billboard Hot 100. Like the songs above, SFPR uses dance music conventions such as a thumping four on the floor beat and syncopated synthesizer track. The video follows a simple linear narrative set within the confines of a house party in suburbia. There are approximately 152 shots in a total video length of 7:17, providing a relatively long average shot length of 2.88 seconds. Hangover by Psy featuring Snoop Dogg: Hangover, by the Korean Pop (K pop) star Psy and the US rapper Snoop Dogg, is a heavily produced electronic song, slower than the others. The “hook” is a repetition of “hangover,” and the video echoes this repetition structurally to emphasize the message of repeated drinking in South Korea. Although not performing as well as Psy’s global hit Gangnam Style, it has received over 255 million YouTube views.
Analysis and Procedure
We used critical multimodal discourse analysis to analyze the videos. This extends simple linguistic content analyses or literal analyses; it aims to “‘denaturalize’ multimodal representations” and “reveal the kinds of power interests buried in them” (Machin and Mayr 2012, 9–10). Multimodality recognizes that modes other than the textual create meaning (O’Halloran et al. 2011) and therefore cannot be ignored. The combination of semiotic modes, or intersemiosis (Jewitt 2009), creates unique meanings to those that might arise if modes are considered singularly. Music provides “temporal continuity across visual cuts” (Iedema 2001, cited in Van Leeuwen and Jewitt 2001). So while music videos often cut rapidly between different spaces and times, music helps marry these disparate images into a unified whole.
A variety of “semiotic resources” (O’Halloran et al. 2011) combine in music videos. These include lyrical content (the textual); visual elements—clothes, gesture, movement, posture (Baldry and Thibault 2006); cinematographic and editing choices—camera angles and shot duration, for example (Thompson and Bordwell 1993); color (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2002); and musical elements of pitch, rhythm, timbre, and tempo (Van Leeuwen 1998).
First, the lyrics of each song were analyzed to identify various metaphors, themes, and objects related to gender and alcohol. Second, YouTube was used to repeatedly view the videos, with pauses at each change of shot to note down visual elements of mise-en-scène, lighting, camera angles, and other salient features. Third, the musical mode was considered for how it worked intersemiotically with the other modes; elements included rising tension, hooks, chorus, instrumentation, and melody. Finally, the various nonlyrical modes were considered in terms of how they augmented or contradicted the lyrics. Ongoing discussions regarding key meanings and dominant discourses arising from the combinations of modes formed a critical aspect of the analysis.
Results
Two major discourses were identified in the multimodal analysis, namely, extreme consumption and freedom, as outlined below. Together they create two specific subject positions (the playboy; woman-as-object) that are discussed in detail followed by considerations around how the videos represent key features of postfeminism, new sexism, and irony.
Extreme Consumption
Within the videos, extreme consumption was constructed in relation to alcohol as well as a variety of consumables, augmented by a sense that “life is short.” In some instances, the ability for men to tolerate extreme consumption was valorized. A lack of alcohol tolerance was also permitted and glorified at times. While it was not always imperative that one’s body should control extreme consumption, being able to handle repeated extreme consumption seemed highly valued, particularly within Hangover and Wild Ones. Pushing oneself to the limit and even exceeding this limit was acceptable, but what mattered most was being able to do it all over again. SFPR revels in exceeding tolerance; outward signs of extreme consumption serve as evidence of commitment to the in-group’s values, as the following lyrics demonstrate: If you show up already tore up this is what you say (sorry for party rocking) And if you’re blacked out with your sack out this is what you say (…) And if you throw up in ya hoe’s cup this is what you say (…) And if she has a hissy fit cause you’re whiskey dick this is what you say (…)
Extreme consumption was also brashly glorified within Wild Ones. In the club scenes, Flo Rida is often shown with a champagne bottle in each hand; he toasts them to the camera and tips two champagne bottles into his mouth. In another shot, he recklessly pours champagne onto a table before a hand reaches into the frame to fill a flute, and the champagne bubbles freely over both the glass and the hand clutching it. Here alcohol is merely an accoutrement to a lifestyle of nonstop travel, “high adrenaline” leisure activities, and partying, all conveyed visually through frantically cut montage. References to Flo Rida’s performances, such as crowd surfing (“take me so high, jumping nose dive, surfing the crowd”), collapse distinctions between his work and play; and as is lyrically apparent, maintenance of this lifestyle requires (traditionally masculine) endurance, tolerance, and resistance to pain: “I like em’ untamed/don’t tell me how pain/Tolerance, bottoms up with the champagne/My life, call my homie then we hit Spain.”
In Hangover, the negative physiological effects of alcohol are presented in a way that also celebrates extreme consumption as well as repeatedly pushing limits. “Letting go” is valued over control: Drink it up and get sick/Bottoms up get wasted/Pour it up drink it up live it up give it up/Oh my god dammit there’s the fucking limit” “I can’t stop/ Making bottles pop until the wheels fall off…and I can’t quit/I wake up in the morning do the same shit.
Freedom
A discourse of freedom is entwined with the hedonistic fantasy that extreme consumption promises. Various forms of fun, transcendence, transgression, and looseness are portrayed across all the videos. This discourse values breaking free from one’s own confines or the strictures “civilized” society attempts to place on the individual. Taste, decency, sexual conservatism, sense, even ordinary “reality” do not constrain the artists, and alcohol was key in facilitating such freedoms. It aided the ability to “get loose” and shed inhibitions, including sexual inhibitions. Flo Rida points to alcohol’s role in facilitating “getting loose” and getting “bent:” “Y’all get loose, loose/After bottle, we all get bent and again tomorrow.” “Getting bent” clearly refers to getting drunk, but it is also a transformative metaphor that includes “bending” reality, escaping its straight and narrow confines. It implies a momentary psychological escape and yet offers the fantasy of endlessly repeating the escape.
Flo Rida’s paradoxically compelling message is to get loose: “gotta break loose ‘cause that’s the motto.” His lyrics point to an exuberant, transcendent masculinity: “I like crazy, foolish, stupid/Party going wild, fist pumping music/I might lose it/Blast to the roof, that’s how we do’z it.” Together with a disembodied height metaphor (blast to the roof), an animalistic metaphor of being “wild” (I like ‘em untamed) constructs a discourse of unfettered freedom. Moreover, Flo Rida skydives, drag races Ferraris, pulls “wheelies” on a BMW motorbike, speeds in a four-wheel-drive off-road buggy over jumps, and skims across marshes in a fan-boat at high speed. In dizzying fashion, the images celebrate freedom, wildness, risk-taking, adventure, and wealth, qualities traditionally associated with hegemonic masculinity (Schrock and Schwalbe 2009). The dance club scenes are rapidly cut with these action sequences in a way that collapses the high adrenaline physical activities of the day into those of the night—skydiving with stagediving—to create a sense of freedom and movement. There is little distinction between work and play; the day’s freedom spills into the night. Further, alcohol and sex are paired intersemiotically. For example, a close-up of a woman’s buttocks in a tight dress also shows the hand of the man with whom she is dancing holding a bottle of vodka. In SFPR, the artists are “free” from staid sartorial confines. Loud leopard and zebra skin patterns, hot pinks, and lime greens (branded with the group’s logo) dominate the wardrobe, set design, and overall aesthetic. With the other modes, the costumes attempt to create difference, a hedonistic homosocial in-group who transgress normal, “decent,” or civilized society. Sky Blu sums it up, “we ain’t got no manners…,” and is reinforced by Redfoo: “I don’t give a fuck….” The freedom to take a carefree attitude is a privilege enabled by money and facilitated by alcohol: “I got a bunch of bad bitches in the back/With Ciroc [vodka] on tap and a little bit of Grey Goose [vodka] oooo
Hangover uses fragmented structure, repetition, and humor to idealize freedom from ordinariness. The injunction within the video seems to be get drunk, wake up (with a hangover), and do it (extreme consumption) again. But far from creating a morose sense of déjà vu, the temporal ambiguity within the video celebrates a privileged, carefree life of leisure and nonstop partying. Snoop Dogg brags, “it’s the life of a superstar.” His transcendent superstar status and accompanying wealth free him from the responsibilities that might constrain “ordinary” men. Alcohol is a means of escape and celebration, “giving up” rigid adherence to life’s confines, with the ill effects of a hangover constructed overwhelmingly as humorous.
In Timber, Pitbull lives a life of luxury not constrained by finances: “Live in hotels, swing on planes/Blessed to say, money ain’t a thing.” This braggadocio—of having “made it”—is a convention borrowed from hip-hop artists who assert their success in freeing themselves from the impoverished communities from which many emerged (Sköld and Rehn 2007). Together with sweeping aerial shots of the sea and associated scenery from Pitbull’s holiday in the Bahamas, a glamorous brand emerges of a globetrotting playboy, unrestrained by time or place, privileged (blessed), and ultimately set free by money. Further, the pre-chorus links drinking almost causally to sex: “Swing your partner round and round/End of the night, it’s going down/One more shot, another round/End of the night, it’s going down.” These references to alcohol are embellished by close-ups of Voli vodka being poured by a woman’s hand into a shot glass and shots of scantily clad women. The sexual imagery leaves no doubt that “it’s going down” refers to sex. Throughout the rest of the video, alcohol is paired with provocative sexual images, such as Ke$ha grabbing her breasts and gazing seductively, directly at the viewer.
The Playboy Subject Position
The playboy position is constructed by the discourses of freedom and extreme consumption, with playboys having the “freedom” to consume alcohol and sex excessively and without repercussion. This is a version of masculinity that is materialistic, urbane, sophisticated, and hedonistic (Jancovich 2012), although the sexually persuasive aspect of the playboy has perhaps been the most salient (O’Hara 2012). It emerged as a contrast to the married breadwinner ideal that predated it; reclaiming the previously negative term of bachelor to endorse a sexually voracious type of masculinity (Patton 2014) inimical to marriage and the family (Jancovich 2012) and free from responsibility.
In the videos, the men were invariably the center of sexual attention and freely boasted of it. The “models in the VIP” or the “hundred supermodels” whom LMFAO and Flo Rida brag about and the young, scantily clad, attractive women visually ubiquitous within the videos are status symbols befitting the male artists’ “social and economic rank.” Money and status enabled the freedom to “have em’…in their bra and thongs” (Pitbull, Timber). Moreover, the sexual persuasiveness central to idealized playboy polygamy is facilitated by alcohol. The drinks in the videos (champagne, Chambord, Patron, and vodka) arguably connote wealth, and thereby help establish the Playboy position, in contrast to traditional associations between men and beer. Sexual persuasiveness (and sometimes coercion) is glorified as an aspect of playful, virile masculinity within the videos. The man’s sexual potency leaves women no choice but to surrender. In this sense, it is also defined by Schippers’s (2007) symbolic aspects of heteronormative sex as “penetrative,” whereby men “take” but is also enabled by complementary postfeminist constructions of women as freely obliging in this regard (Amy-Chinn 2006). In Wild Ones, Flo Rida is flanked and fawned over by two beautiful women (neither of whom is his love interest) while riding the airboat. That they are clearly enamored with him establishes Flo Rida as a powerful, desirable heterosexual male, the “the phallocentric center of sexual attention” (Sheff 2006, 626).
In Timber, it seems Pitbull’s attractive partner is just one of many. Pitbull’s playboy virility is conveyed in part through the use of the pun “swing” (live in hotels, swing on planes). He defies the monogamous limitations that might ordinarily impinge on regular men and constructs playboy-type qualities as desirable. His “slickness” gives him supreme confidence that, despite any protestations that “she” does not “want it,” she actually does: The bigger they are, the harder they fall/This big-iddy boy’s a dig-gidy dog I have ‘em like Miley Cyrus, clothes off Twerking in their bras and thongs, timber Face down, booty up, timber/That’s the way we like to—what?—timber I’m slicker than an oil spill/She say she won’t, but I bet she will, timber
Women as Objects
Women were commoditized as an essential corollary of the “playboy” position, and extreme consumption extended to the consumption of women. Key strategies included the separation of women’s bodies from their overall person, evaluations based on appearance, and language indicating that the primary function of women’s bodies is to satisfy male sexual desires. These techniques have long been a concern of much feminist scholarship (Moradi and Huang 2008; Szymanski, Moffitt, and Carr 2010).
Visual and verbal metonym were frequent. “Booty” came to fragmentize and simultaneously totally represent women. Redfoo grabs “fat booty” in the club when he sees it. In Timber, fragmentation and fetishization are achieved (in that order) through bifurcating the body, then demoting the seat of emotion and personality (face down) while promoting a sexualized body part (booty up) in much the same way the frequent close-ups on women’s “booties” do. Visually, sexual objectification is realized in a frame that inverts the lyric “face” through its pairing with a close up of a dancer’s derriere. In many other places, this objectification is developed further through a barrage of “booty shots” and close-ups on other fragments of women’s bodies, which force the male gaze upon the viewer.
Additionally, women in the videos were often stripped of agency, save as sexual provocateurs, and conform to observations that the objectification of women makes “them less fully human” (Heflick and Goldenberg 2009). Women are othered as powerless—as seen above in the way RedFoo makes a woman “flash her ta tas.” The men’s power and freedom to take has its flipside in a corresponding lack of freedom for women. “Getting” or “taking” a woman as a privilege of being a successful male can be seen in Snoop’s Dogg’s line: “eenie meenie miney mo, catch a lady by the toe” which constructs women as animalistic “things” to be caught. Similarly, Pitbull’s line “she says she won’t but I bet she will” or Red Foo’s “automatic habit” of “grabbing booty” defies female agency. So too the imagery constructed in Wild Ones of women as wild, untamed, animalistic, and thus less than human—but literally “asking for it.” The following lines are sung by Sia (the female guest artist) and as such help to construct the position of women within the video: “I am a wild one/Break me in/Saddle me up and let’s begin…Tame me now/Running with wolves/And I’m on the prowl.” The animalistic imagery of being on the prowl but asking to be tamed, figuratively encapsulates the double entanglement of postfeminism (McRobbie 2004, 2011). Women are expected to possess agency—but not too much. The metaphor is extended in Flo Rida’s response, in which the woman as wild, untamed animal makes domination acceptable, perhaps even necessary. It “keeps her in her place” within the heterosexual matrix: Show you another side of me/A side you would never thought you would see Tear up that body/Dominate you ‘til you’ve had enough/ I hear you like the wild stuff.
In addition to the line about having a “bunch of bad bitches in the back,” a mini-narrative in SFPR in which a woman is thrown out of the car constructs women as disposable, as sexual commodities. The metaphorical association of the woman’s expulsion from the car is of being discarded—this despite (or because) she has previously (already) gratified him with oral sex. She runs to catch up and is thereby constructed as needy and desperate. As with the “hysterical woman” who has a “hissy fit” earlier in the song (if she has a hissy fit ‘cause you’re whiskey dick), so too is a discourse based on historical sexist assumptions of women’s lack of emotional regulation reconstructed here. The woman’s angry admonishment of Sky Blu for tossing her out of the car, her dismissal through the line “no hard feelings bitch,” and the familiar sarcastic apology: “sorry for party rocking” serve to diminish and ridicule her anger and humorously glorify his actions. A narcissistic inclination to take and consume in the interests of “party rocking” is constructed as acceptable and funny. Wealth and alcohol are implicitly associated with the ability and privilege to possess women, reinforcing their positioning as disposable commodities.
Postfeminism, New Sexism, and Irony
The constructions of masculinity chronicled above can all be understood within a postfeminist sociocultural milieu. The portrayal of women in the videos arises from a cultural context that encourages women to subjectify themselves as objects. The burden of responsibility is lifted from the men; women are also complicit. Gill’s (2008, 2009) “midriff” can be seen in each of these videos or, equally, McRobbie’s (2009) “phallic girl.” The midriff is “a young, attractive, heterosexual woman who knowingly and deliberately plays with her sexual power and is always ‘up for’ sex” (Gill 2009, 148).
In Timber, Ke$ha’s hypersexual, provocative posturing seems to lend support to Pitbull’s playboy arrogance. She freely flaunts her “excessive femininity” (McRobbie 2007, 725). Flo Rida’s love interest remains devoted despite his flirtations with other women in a way befitting the complementarity of hegemonic femininity (Shippers 2007). She is a phallic girl—adventurous, loving the life of fast cars (although, with the exception of piloting the airboat to “rescue” Flo Rida, she is never in the driving seat herself). She is “classy” and in control as she sits in full polo regalia, dominant within a low-angle shot astride a horse. She is obviously “up for it” too, strip dancing freely on the club’s stage and asking to be “broken in,” tamed, and saddled. In SFPR, the young woman in the car lifts her head to wave and smile before “going down” again on Sky Blu. The lyrics valorize voyeurism in a way that also normalizes pornography: “getting brain [oral sex] at a red light with people watching.” The women in these videos also seem to enjoy drinking until drunk, perhaps because alcohol more readily “[has women] in their bras and thongs” (Pitbull, Timber) and “their clothes coming off by the end of the night,” to dance on stage in their underwear (as in Wild Ones).
Objectification of women is often “excused” as irony in postfeminist culture. It “allows a speaker to articulate certain views whilst disclaiming responsibility for, or ownership of them” (Benwell 2007, 539). In ‘lad’ magazines, feminist gains can be ‘accounted’ for in an ironic, knowing, and humorous fashion. The lad is characterized by rejection of “traditional adult responsibilities” (Blloshmi 2013, 13), and lad culture “marked a return to traditional masculine values of sexism, exclusive male friendship and homophobia” demarcated by “an unrelenting gloss of knowingness and irony” (Benwell 2007, 539). The “ironic sexism” or “complicit cynicism” of lad culture is apparent in the videos. They are characterized by carnivalesque fun and irreverence, aggressively dismissing the staid discourses of feminism or political correctness under a blanket of tongue-in-cheek humor. However, in the heterosexuality that underpins both lad culture and playboy masculinity lies conservatism. Particularly, SFPR parodies—and perhaps hybridizes—certain challenges to heteronormative values in order to subjugate them. Homosexuality is invoked and ridiculed in one scene, through knowledge that the “woman” who is performing oral sex is in fact Redfoo in drag. While a man performing fellatio may cause discomfort in the video’s overwhelmingly heterosexual context, the drag makes it acceptable. Comic relief, however, is palpable in the ensuing discovery that he only looked like he was giving oral sex when he was in fact funneling beer all along. LMFAO appear risqué, edgy, or sexually unshackled without actually upsetting normative heterosexual values. That a “real woman” elsewhere in the video performs fellatio for real further reiterates heterosexuality as integral to the construction of masculinity.
In another scene, the line “all the girls make out for the whole damn club to see” is matched with a shot of two “hot lesbians” (a common postfeminist advertising ideal; Gill 2008, 2009) falling to the floor and out of frame in passionate embrace, while Redfoo watches on with a smirking “male gaze” (Mulvey 2006). As Diamond (2005) asserts, “such images implicitly convey that the most desirable and acceptable form of female–female sexuality is that which pleases and plays to the heterosexual male gaze, titillating male viewers while reassuring them that the participants remain sexually available in the conventional heterosexual marketplace” (p. 105). This complementarity with heterosexual norms rescues this lesbianism from “pariah” status (Schippers 2007).
Similar expressions of sexual adventurousness within the confines of compulsory heterosexuality are delivered with a “nod and a wink” in other videos. Pitbull’s most controversial lines are delivered with a knowing smirk. If you refuse to acknowledge the joke, you are positioned on the outside (McRobbie 2004) as conservative, unliberated, perhaps boring. Alternatively, Flo Rida invokes sexual domination and coercion but without the ironic acknowledgment of transgression. One might consider this within a culture that, influenced by the ease of access enabled by the Internet, normalizes pornography (Carroll et al. 2008), much of which depicts the “sexual dominance of willing women” (Bridges et al. 2010, 1080).
Discussion
Although the masculinities presented in each video appear different in places, they are united through what might be considered global hegemonic masculine ideals based on heteronormative values (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). These conform to symbolic ideals of domination identified by Schippers (2007) as based on heteronormative sex. Consumer capitalism can be considered the driver that unites the various discourses and positions discussed above. That Pitbull is part owner of Voli vodka is important. So too are instances of other alcohol product placement within the videos; these videos advertise alcohol. As Harvey (1989) argued, “the promotion of a culture of consumerism sustain[s] sufficient buoyancy of demand in consumer markets to keep capitalist production profitable” (p. 61). Extreme consumption in the videos is tied to fantasies of freedom, and the potent fallacy of being able to repeat ad infinitum drives the insatiability that perpetuates economic growth.
Extreme consumption was not limited to alcohol. In fact, the particular product demanded is irrelevant to the “metanarrative” of “the inevitability of market economies” that drives post-postmodernity (Braidotti 2005, 169). Demand is a cultural value easily transferred to a range of commodities. As the videos enticingly promise, the deliverance can be realized through clothing, BMW motorbikes, sports cars, overseas holidays, video games, and women. Leisure itself is commoditized. According to “the commodification of leisure” critique, “our preferences are ‘manipulated’ to choose forms of leisure which are complementary to consumption” (Benhabib and Bisin 2002, 19).
Debord’s (1967) notion of “spectacular consumption” (e.g., Hamilton and Wagner 2011; Peñaloza 1998; Watts 1997; Yousman 2003) and its “image/appearance emphasis, large scope, foundation in commodity logic, artificiality, and […] its distracting and depoliticizing effects” (McAllister 2007, 245) is useful for making sense of the “spectacle” within these videos. Extreme consumption is linked visually, lyrically, perhaps even musically, to heady discourses of freedom. Consumption is depoliticized and elevated through montages that construct their own artificial reality as real and that allow us to “move one step closer to our imagined utopia” (Dyer 1981, cited in Hamilton and Wagner 2011, 379).
The masculinities that form part of the spectacle within these videos result from intersections (Christensen and Jensen 2014) of race, gender, and market forces. While the videos analyzed do not belong to the gangsta rap or even hip-hop genres, they all borrow rap elements from these. For Watts (1997), gangsta rap is defined by “a spectacularly symbiotic relationship between the dictates of the street code and an energetic American consumerism” (p. 50). As Hunter (2011) argues, conspicuous consumption within hip-hop has become particularly sexualized through increasing ties with adult entertainment. Avery et al. (2016) also note that black men in the top songs from 1990 to 2010 presented themselves as hypermasculine. These constructions reinforce historical racist stereotypes while ostensibly offering white audiences an “authentic” view of black culture (Watts 1997; Yousman 2003) which sells.
While largely divorced from gritty ghetto “reality,” watered-down violence in the form of misogyny and sexual objectification is retained within these videos and forms part of the spectacle. Likewise, the materiality originally valorized by gangsta rap as a visible sign of one’s success and status remains. Authenticity is also a key part of the appeal. It results from a complex interplay between artist presentation and audience reception. Thus, it is unstable and up for continued negotiation. Nevertheless, black is generally seen as more authentic than white within hip-hop culture, and assertions of origins are also often used as a basis for claiming authenticity (Harrison 2008). The tension between “making it” (achieving commercial success) while “keeping it real” (not separating oneself too much from one’s early life or community) is constantly negotiated (Hess 2005; Sköld and Rehn 2007). Pitbull includes the line, “it’s just me, ain’t a damn thing changed,” reminding us that he is still “true to himself.” It is a necessary reassurance that “grounds” his global success and legitimates his “Mr Worldwide” branding. The other artists similarly make claims around authenticity.
Connell’s (1995) notions of complicity and the patriarchal dividend suggest that men can avoid overtly displaying misogyny or homophobia in everyday life when media representations maintain it in an overarching way. Through the widespread dissemination of postfeminist ideals, imbalances in hegemonic gendered power relations remain intact, and men reap the dividends that such power relations offer. Everybody sexualizes women. Everybody “gets the joke.” But it is men who stand to gain the most. The four videos analyzed in this study invoke a sense of fun and freedom, a sense of liberation from feminist puritanism, and all link this to the consumption of alcohol. It is permissible to not only “enjoy looking” (McRobbie 2004) but to enjoy touching too. Yet, in keeping with observations that hegemonic masculinity is not a “singular monolith” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), it would be premature to assert that the masculinities proffered in these videos are hegemonic. Certainly, they are misogynistic and seek to preserve imbalances in gendered power relations. But, as some have observed (e.g., Mullen et al. 2007; Wetherell and Edley 1999), men often distance themselves from such ideals. Thus, the extent to which the representations of Pitbull, Flo Rida, LMFAO, or Snoop Dogg and Psy are taken up by young people as authentic hegemonic masculinities remains to be seen.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.