Essay

'Contemporary music videos are merely elaborate adverts with little, artistic, social or moral integrity'

Throughout time, music videos have always been used as a way of promoting or advertising an artist. Nowadays they are still used for the same reason but with less morality than before, especially in genres such as rap and hip-hop.

 
An example of this would be Vanilla Ice’s song on the right. Here we see only 2-3 fragments of a female in tight and short clothing, or a silhouette of her dancing, for about a few seconds each. The rest of the song is focused on the artist as he performs different dance routines or raps to the camera. However when looking at current music videos, we can see how women are sexualised more often and that it has developed rapidly through the things they wear and how they act. The way in which they are dressed and act some may argue is immoral, religiously since a woman should be dressed modestly and socially because a woman shouldn't be attracting the wrong kind of attention towards herself by dressing in this way.

In the start of this video, one of the first lyrics we hear is “I don’t know your name but you heard my name” this suggests that the artist feels that the identity of the woman he is referring to has no relevance to him. For the artist, his persona being known is enough; therefore being aware of others is not crucial to him, as long as they notice him and his status.

Additionally they gave used the body of a female to promote one of the artists, by having his name written all over her exposed body. This kind of promotion objectifies women, seeing them and their physique as props to help sell the artist to the public. To market an artist in this kind of way shows that they are directing this video to the male dominated segment of their audience market. By showing off women in this way they are pleasuring the male gaze and putting the artists name in places they know their audience will be looking.  This then turns into a mutual win for both the viewer and artist. The audience is being satisfied and the artist is being promoted successfully.

Singers these days are even becoming aware of this sort of exposure and use of women in music videos. Jennifer Lopez's song I Luh Ya Papi comments upon this. The video starts with Lopez having a meeting with someone about what she should do in this music video. Two of her friends are also present. Lopez is introduced to different ideas of what to do in her video such as having it set in a zoo. Her two friends then mention that if she were a man they would not be struggling with what to do in her video, and that they would just have loads of women dancing and it being set in numerous extravagant locations. They also mention that her video should start with two naked men laying on her bed ‘for no reason’. The opening of this video speaks about there being no reasoning for why men can objectify women in music videos but it has not been done the other way around. 

There are many reasons for producing a music video, not just for advertising purposes but also things such as to get a message across , to portray an artist in a certain way to their fans, for advertising purposes, in order to make the song more interesting or explain the message behind it visually. Songs like All About That Bass give evidence for this, because the song talks about girls not having to be a certain body type to be attractive and the video consistently backs up the lyrics with props such as human Barbie dolls and girls of all different shapes and sizes.

Another reason for making music videos could be to tell someone's story, for instance Taylor Swifts Teardrops on My Guitar. This song refers to a period of her life in high school when she was in love with her best friend but he never saw her in the same way and would continuously talk about his new girlfriend to her. 

Additionally music videos could be used to simply have somewhere for the lyrics to be shown along with the song. People such as Lupe Fiasco use this to their advantage. By creating a lyric video it forces the listener to read the lyrics which gives them a better understanding of what the song is about.  In Lupe Fiasco's song Muhammad Walks, he raps about the Islamic narratives and morals. This is yet another reason for the making of a music video, to portray religion in a positive light.

Overall I'd say that I do not agree with the statement above because, contemporary music videos are not just used for advertising purposes and can contain a high level of value.