Spring Break
Living The Dream
John Bailey
Issue date: 10/11/07 Section: Focus
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The intersection of the two media, within music videos, is definitely "worse."
"Dreamworlds 3," written, directed and produced by Sut Jhally, takes a critical look at the images that bombard the typical MTV or VH1 viewer on a daily basis. It was shown last night by Men Against Violence Against Women (MAVAW) in the Student Union Theater and was followed by a discussion of the issues raised by the film.
Jhally's work picks apart the cultural icon of "music video" into component parts, which turn out to be sexual submission, humiliation, objectification and lots of shiny, shaking bodies. Jhally's dry, sober narration makes these concepts abundantly clear. According to Jhally, Dreamworlds 3 examines the "techniques of storytelling" used in the modern music video. He describes the scenarios, costumes and camera viewpoints in music videos, and how each element conspires to create a picture of willing, hypersexualized women who desire nothing more than male dominance.
In the film, clips of well-known music videos from artists like Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears and Madonna are accompanied by an eerie, muted soundtrack. The images are immediately familiar: Bouncing ladies, beer and cars and snarling male faces. It's a familiarity, says Jhally, which reflects our intimate cultural acquaintance with the "dreamworlds" presented by these music videos and the "pornographic eye" through which their stories are told.
According to Jhally, these "dreamworlds," "came from the stories that our culture tells us about what is normal and what is not." This connection that Jhally forms, the link between our popular media and our own self-identities, is an important one, and is the most striking point made by his film. The latter part of the movie is especially unsettling, as the audience is subjected to actual footage of scenes of public sexual harassment and abuse. The similarity between these images, a woman spread out, unclothed, restrained and fondled by mobs of men, and the images in the music videos is unsettling.
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