Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Blog #2
Nicole Gregio
Women’s Studies 360
April 26, 2011
Throughout the music video by Travis Porter “Make it Rain” official Figvrati Films, one can see that it is gendered, racialized, internalized as well as a social gaze. Rap videos now days highly rely on using sexual images of mainly women to sell their videos to their audience. Bordo’s article we talked about in class discusses how it is never just simply a body that women’s bodies are objectified throughout our culture as we allow these things to happen in our society. Women’s voluptuous bodies are very much used as power throughout music videos. This is represented heavily in popular culture in two thousand twenty eleven. Furthermore is what I would think is a terribly degrading music video on behalf of women. I will put my major focus and emphasis of analyzing this video into how this implicitly as well as explicitly addresses the ideas of body size and type.
Throughout the black and white rap music video, it is obvious that the shadow of a naked stripping body is an African American female. This woman is wearing stiletto shoes, a bra and underwear. The lyrics by the rapper, Travis Porter, are extremely degrading toward women especially with the over exaggeration of the term “bitch”. The lyrics of the female are saying “you wanna see some ass, I wanna see sum cash keep dem dollars comin and das gunna make me dance, and das gunna make me dance...” This is extremely problematic for the African American female culture. This portrays that all or most African American females are dancing and using their bodies to make money, when in reality this is probably not really happening. One must think about how many young African American males and females are watching this music video, many kids may think that this is what society believes is okay. However the rap video is problematic because the male is degrading and talking down to the female and she is doing what he is asking her to do in the video. This is definitetly a racialized and gendered gaze of sexuality. Travis Porter’s lyrics state “At my fucking house hoe put it in your mouth hoe”. This statement in my mind is saying if you basically do not do what you are told that I will not “make it rain” for you anymore with money. Throughout the music video there is money being thrown everywhere in the air as well as water symbolizing sexual orgasms. Travis makes crazy faces as he raps like he does not care about anything. When he’s throwing the money around, he’s the boss and in control. In one of his lines of lyrics he says “smack her ass then I laugh”, this basically shows that he does not care about respecting her body, which at this point is extremely ironic. He also at a point in the music video is smoking illegal substance of some sort.
Hegemonic beauty ideals are problematic with these music videos as a I stated earlier, not all African American Females dance for money. This could heavily be based on opinion and the culture of someone. I have taken different outlooks on music videos and popular culture the more that I review them and analyze them. However the “beat” of the music may be catchy and cool the lyrics and the dancing are defiantly not cool. It really sucks for the African American women and men in this case that two people made a choice to make a video and this could send out the wrong impression of the entire culture as an entirety. One must realize that simply because two people made a bad decision that the entire ethnic group can not be help accountable. It is sad that any woman would want to portray herself in this fashion. One does not know the reason for her dancing and stripping either.
One can see how throughout the music video by Travis Porter “Make it Rain” official Figvrati Films, that it is gendered, racialized, internalized as well as a viewed with a social gaze. Bordo’s article we talked about in class discusses how it is never just simply a body that women’s bodies are objectified throughout our culture as we allow these things to happen in our society, this is defiantly a main objective of this music video by Travis Porter.
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