Critical Media Studies

a blog designed for my english class critically analyzing the media, and expressing how it effects us as people and the way we see the world.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Things I Hate About Pop Music







“Let's cut to the chase here, Kesha says “Shut up let's have sex”. That is the complete gist of Blah Blah Blah, and most likely no one could deliver it more effectively and in a more catchy fashion. Throw in sea of synths and drum machines and this is the second major hit from Kesha. Hedonism has a clear champion and now a new theme song.”

Review of Ke$ha's Blah Blah Blah




Ke$ha's second hit single Blah Blah Blah has captured the hearts and ears of fans of pop around the world. The catchy tune and Ke$ha's almost bitchy sounding voice combine for a perfect song to put on the radio. But what about the lyrics? Oh yeah, those words she says that make it hard to hear the music! The lyrics to this song if anyone is even paying attention to them, say explicitly how Ke$ha doesn't care who she's sleeping with, she just wants you to “turn around, boy, let me hit that” So what's the big deal? Clearly this song is meant for young adults, or else it wouldn't be saying these things! But we all know that not only young adults are listening to the radio. Little kids hear this song, and because they don't understand what it's about, they start singing it in the middle of school. The fact that this has been happening for years now really irks me. How can parents let their kids listen to this music without telling them what it's about? I remember singing “Californication” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers when I was young, and my mother telling me not to sing it because it’s about sex (even though it actually isn't). Has our society just adapted to this racy and sexual kind of music, and accepted it as the norm? I, for one, have not. Parents may argue that telling their children at a young age that the songs their singing are actually about sex isn’t the right things to do, but I completely disagree. Kids need to be exposed to what these songs really mean if their parents are going to let them listen to them. This song, not unlike many others on the radio today, glamorizes sex and drugs, and advertises these things to those who are listening. It doesn’t matter if it is their intended audience or not! Consumerism tells us, subconsciously or not, that this is how we should live. When people who are sober or against drugs hear things like this, they may feel inferior or like they’re missing out socially because they’re not living this way. This can severely effect people’s self esteem and self image. Almost everyone hears songs like this, so almost everyone is effected, and almost everyone listens to these messages and believes them to be true. Some people could think that this song is only saying how Ke$ha lives her life, and we should live our lives without caring what anyone else thinks, which is a good thing. Some people may even think that this song has feminist feelings and meanings behind it. But this is why critically analyzing the media is so important, and this blog is too; we have too look deeper into the media and really try to see what it is saying to us.




Something else entirely that this song brings up is how Ke$ha talks about men in her lyrics. We as a culture are so used to men talking about women like trash in music, that when a woman talks about a man like that, we get offended! …Wait, that makes no sense. Shouldn’t we be used to this? Shouldn’t it be okay for a woman to say these things if a man says them first? Well, this is more of a battle of ethics than anything. I agree with the phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right.” I don’t think that just because male artists do this in their music that female artists should too. If anything, I think that gives female artists more incentive to NOT write songs this way! Just because we as females may be angry at male artists for writing songs this way, doesn’t mean we should stoop to their level. We have to be the bigger people (gender?) in this! It has been a stereotype for years that men “wear the pants” and are the dominant gender, and I think that plays a huge role in the lyrics of some of the songs that are on the radio today. Patriarchal ideas and thoughts still exist, even if only in the minds of men. Men need to feel bigger and stronger than women, or else they are weak pansies! These songs are meant to make men feel strong and powerful, but in reality, they should make them feel disgusted. Maybe if guys actually looked at things like this blog, they would see that sexualizing women doesn’t make them look good; it actually does quite the opposite. Unfortunately, socialization of these sexist ideas has been happening for a while now. If a woman is in any way less petite than they “should be,” we decide she must be a lesbian because she is “butch”. Which is totally ridiculous, but think about it; we’ve all done it. This music makes it so that we as a culture believe the fact that women need to be small, weak, and dominated by men, which makes women suffer in so many ways! Think about how the media influences girls with eating disorders. I’m not saying that men don’t have them, because they do. It’s just that even the radio tells women to be weak, and it also tells men that women are objects and nothing else. All around, it’s just a negative message, the same one we’ve been hearing for years: sex sells.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Ending Songs in Mad Men

http://youtu.be/YwmIxAU-yB4


This link is the ending scene of Mad Men's first episode, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes". Take a look at what's happening between 1:30 and 1:45. Can we just look at this scene for a second? It would look right at home with a fifties styled lettering slapped across it promoting god-knows-what that will "complete your life/family/marriage!" It even fades away into a bigger shot of their whole beautiful house! This picturesque image of "the perfect family" is filmed in such a way, as most of AMC's Mad Men is, so that this family almost looks as if it's being sold to housewives around the United States! What's actually funny about this (but definitely not coincidental) is that this idea really was being sold to housewives in the fifties. A family in the fifties has no problems: your one daughter and one son, in perfect health, walk home from school each day (if you don't pick them up in your husband's fancy car) to you, a loving mother in a well kept and modest to big sized house who has just finished cleaning the house (like you do every day after you do your hair, nails, and make up). Fast forward a few hours, and your husband comes home from work to a cold glass of brandy and a hot, home cooked dinner on the table, and then you leave him alone while he drinks and reads the paper (while you clean some more) until he comes to bed later that night, probably drunk, to show you "how much he loves you". Honestly, if I were in this situation, I would probably go crazy because of how boring and sedentary it was.

I have often walked down this street before
But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before
All at once am I several stories high
Knowing I'm on the street where you live

Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?
Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?
Does enchantment pour out of every door?
No, it's just on the street where you live

And oh, the towering feeling just to know somehow you are near
The overpowering feeling that any second you may suddenly appear

People stop and stare, they don't bother me
For there's nowhere else on earth that I would rather be
Let the time go by, I won't care if I
Can be here on the street where you live



In the ending scene of Mad Men's first episode, we see one of the main characters, Don Draper, kissing his children goodnight. He has come home from a long day of work to what seems like "The perfect home"; his blond wife wakes up to greet him in the bedroom of a picturesque home, and his two children are fast asleep. The message we get is that he lives the "perfect life," which we all know doesn't actually exist. Earlier in the episode, however, Don is talking to a client, Rachel, about advertising for her store. He asks her why she has never been married, and she says she has never been in love. He retaliates by telling her that "The reason you haven't felt [love] is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons." Don saying that to this woman is odd, because the very next scene is him going home to his loving family. You would think that Don feels true love for his wife, whom he has a wonderful, perfect home and children with. Well, you would be wrong. Little does Betty, Don's wife, know that Don is currently having an affair with a woman named Midge, who seems to be everything Betty is not: strong, out going, creative, loud. This is the only real glimpse we get into Don Draper's real problems in the whole episode.

The song during the outro of this scene and the ending credits, "On the Street Where You Live" by Vic Damone, starts off with the lyrics above. These lyrics seem to describe an air of love and happiness, which played a huge part in the era's simulation of "the perfect family". It is interesting that at the end of the first episode, we only see the surface of the characters deeper issues, such as Don Draper's issues at work, and the music portrays the idea that these issues don't even exist. It ties into the idea that the only problems men had in their lives was work, and the only thing troubling a woman's mind was what to make for supper; a huge simulation. Not so coincidentally, this song is originally from the musical "My Fair Lady", which is a take on the ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion. Pygmalion is the tale of a sculptor who creates a beautiful sculpture of a woman, and then falls in love with her. We could analyze this is a few ways but I'll focus on three. One being that families, or women in particular, in the fifties feel in love with an image of "the perfect family" which didn't actually exist. On a smaller scale, we could say that this song applies directly to the scene in which it comes on, which we could interpret to mean that Don, although earlier falling for his wife, now realizes that she isn't all she thought he would be. In the spirit of feminism, we could look at it from Betty's point of view and say that now that she finally has "the perfect life", which she has probably dreamed about since she was little, she sees that it is all a farce. Or, at least for now, she thinks she is doing things all wrong.

1-36 On The Street Where You Live - Vic Damone.mp3