Deadlines/Brief

Music videos are so 80s/90s, right? They belong with the era when MTV screened wall-to-wall vids instead of 'reality' TV? Try telling that to the millions who bought Gangnam Style; were they really simply loving the music? 1.6bn (and still climbing) have viewed the video on YT, not to mention the many re-makes (school eg, eg2), viral ads + celeb link-ups (even political protest in Seoul) - and it doesn't matter how legit it is, this nightmare for daydream Beliebers is making a lot of money, even from the parodies + dislikes. All this for a simple dance track that wouldn't have sounded out of place in 1990 ... but had a fun vid. This meme itself was soon displaced by the Harlem Shake. Music vids even cause diseases it seems!
This blog explores every aspect of this most postmodern of media formats, including other print-based promo tools used by the industry, its fast-changing nature, + how fans/audiences create/interact. Posts are primarily written with Media students/educators in mind. Please acknowledge the blog author if using any resources from this blog - Mr Dave Burrowes

Thursday, 15 September 2016

GENDER (w)rapper in a dress: pop gets queered

There's nothing new in rock and pop stars transgressing and undermining normative gender expectations: David Bowie, Iggy Pop, all those 60s 'longhairs', Janis Joplin, Marilyn Manson, Perry Farrell, Boy George, Little Richard, Annie Lennox...
Nonetheless, in an era when a bearded woman won Eurovision, Judith Butler's provocative pronouncement that gender is a fiction we learn to act out has clearly won some high profile fans.
We need to be careful when judging representations: Miley Cyrus would mock a feminist male gaze reading of her controversial act, rejecting sexual and gender labels which underpin this.
...Which doesn't necessarily make her right, and Sinead O'Connor (who wrote am open letter to Cyrus on exploitation by male record label bosses) wrong. Without denying Cyrus agency, as Stuart Hall would argue, your response (or reading) will be partly guided by your own subjectivity, background, identity
Female fury and a gangster in a dress: meet the pop stars toppling gender stereotypes http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/13/sex-pop-gender-stereotypes-young-thug-tove-lo-mykki-blanco-deap-vally?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

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