Lisa Lewis+
Female Address in Music Videos: A Feminist Perspective
Introduction:
Feminist media critics challenge Hall's (1982) notion of signification, expanding cultural approaches to textual meaning.
Cultural struggle over meaning, especially gender representation in music videos, is analyzed within the theoretical framework.
MTV's Male Adolescence Discourse:
MTV, targeting 12-34 year olds, criticized for perpetuating a sexist male orientation.
Choice of reproducing the culturally-salient ideological category of youth.
Target audience articulated primarily in terms of male adolescent concerns and practices.
Hall's (1982) theory of struggle over meaning applied to MTV's male adolescence discourse — pertains to textual activity.
Textually, MTV enacted its male adolescence address through representations of male street culture, social rebelliousness, and fantasies of female conquest.
Feminist film criticism recognized gender as a social construct influencing textual production but failed to adequately theorize female experience.
Female musicians engaged in a struggle over meaning by appropriating MTV's discourse for a female adolescence address.
A number of female musician videos took up the challenge of re-articulating the text, appropriating MTV’s male youth address for the production of a female adolescence address.
Their videos engage in a struggle over meaning by offering representations that resonate with female cultural experiences of adolescence and gender in the United States.
De Lauretis (1984) attempted to rework feminist criticism to account for the active field of cultural struggle in which meanings are produced, recognizing women as gendered subjects who participate in struggles over meaning.
British Culturalism and Female Youth:
British culturalism influences the consideration of "lived experience" as an analytical construct.
McRobbie criticizes the neglect of female youth in cultural expression, focusing on the lived social context in which texts and textual meanings are produced and demonstrating the connection of mediated texts to social practice.
Gender experience as a context for examining textual practice activates women's role in cultural production.
Dance, dressing up, and other forms of female cultural expression are integral to understanding gender representation.
United by a similar visual treatment of gender experience, female address videos enable the conflicts and pleasures that girls distinctly experience to the surface.
Four female musicians - Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Pat Benatar, and Tina Turner - demonstrate how videos encourage female adolescent viewers to "speak in their own voices."
Female Address Videos
Female address videos suggest to female spectators that access to the privileged realm of male cultural experience is partially a matter of discovering their own cultural agency.
Female address videos: Strategies of Address:
Female address videos take advantage of another code of male adolescence that the image of the street allows to surface - that of delinquency.
The perception that girls are somehow “less delinquent” than boys has generally resulted in the greater provision of social programs to male youth.
Female address videos focus on challenging the double standard that regards female adolescent delinquency primarily in terms of sexual transgression and appropriate the richness of signification that the image of the street holds out to boys and men.
Two modes of address:
Access Signs (appropriating male experiences) and Discovery Signs (celebrating distinctly-female modes).
Access Signs involve the visual appropriation of male experiences by female video stars.
Discovery Signs reference and celebrate distinctly-female modes of cultural expression and experience.
In female address videos, access signs open out into discovery signs.
Access Signs: Appropriating the Meaning of the Street:
MTV's representation of the street empowers male viewers, while females are socialized to avoid streets.
Streets express male adolescent experiences of peer camaraderie and rebelliousness, desires for independence from social authorities and female subjugation.
Females avoid streets for fear of harassment or rape, to expect to become objects of the male gaze if they make themselves too visible by loitering or walking slowly.
Female address videos appropriate the image of the street for access signs, challenging male privilege.
Madonna, Lauper, Benatar, and Turner use the street as a site for female camaraderie and resistance.
Female video stars symbolically execute takeovers of male space, erasure of sex-roles, and demand parity with male privilege.
Those in which the privileged experience of boys and men is visually appropriated, takeovers of male space, the erasure of sex-roles, and demand parity with male privilege.
Access signs argue in the language of role-reversal and utopianism for equal rights and recognition.
Discovery Signs: Creating Meaning from Girl Culture:
MTV's development of a new commercial formula has ended up sponsoring a struggle over meaning which vitally redresses social assumptions about female adolescent experience and representation.
Female address videos, by presenting a sensitive and descriptive representation of female gender experience, have given girls an opportunity to speak.
Girls' cultural practices, such as dance, fashion, and shopping, are reclaimed and revalued in discovery signs. Dance as a means of control and bonding; fashion as a mode of self-expression McRobbie (1984) describes dance as an activity of control, pleasure and sensuality for girls.
Discovery signs contribute to female address by referencing and revaluing such female modes of cultural expression
Analysis of Female Musicians' Videos:
Madonna
Access Sign: "Borderline" immerses Madonna in male street corner culture, challenging stereotypes.
Discovery Sign: "Borderline" moves into discovery signs, presenting the female fantasy of becoming a fashion model
Cyndi Lauper
Access Sign: In "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," Lauper leads a frenzied dance challenging male harassment on the street.
Discovery Sign: Dance is the mode through which Lauper and her female followers accomplish their symbolic take-back of the street.
Pat Benatar
Access Sign: "Love is a Battlefield" presents a militant version of street take-over, challenging the code of the prostitute.
Discovery Sign: Dance is the vehicle for women's militancy, combining sexual energy with self-defense moves.
Tina Turner
Access Sign: In "What’s Love Got to Do With It?", Turner challenges the prostitute code, strutting down the street with confidence.
Discovery Sign: Turner adds to the sense of control over her body through distinctive steps and a mix of gestures.
challenges idea that Female delinquency means always means prostitution
Female Fans and Recognition:
Female fans desire recognition and fame as expressive cultural subjects, responding to their exclusion from male cultural privileges.
Female address videos inadvertently sponsor a struggle over meaning, allowing girls to speak about their experiences.
Desire for fame and attention expressed by female fans relates to their experience of gender inequality.
The desire for fame and attention that girl fans express relates back to their experience of gender inequality, back to the fact of their exclusion from male forms of cultural expression and privilege.
Conclusion:
Female address videos challenge gender norms in music videos, offering a platform for girls to express their cultural agency.
The struggle over meaning presented in these videos spills into everyday cultural practices, giving girls an opportunity to speak.
Female address videos present a sensitive and descriptive representation of female gender experience.
MTV’s development of a new commercial formula has ended up sponsoring a struggle over meaning which vitally redresses social assumptions about female adolescent experience and representation
Female address videos, by presenting a sensitive and descriptive representation of female gender experience, have given girls an opportunity to speak