Everyday Pornography-Let's have some fun; this beat is sick.......

Pornographic actions are being incorporated into all sorts of modern media today.  Even in music.  We all know about the esteemed Lady Gaga.  She’s always pushing limits with her outrageous personality, outfits, and song lyrics.   Most of the time, it is difficult for people to see the hidden meaning in her songs.  An example of this is her debut song, “Poker Face.”  Most people would think that she is singing about playing a game of poker with her friends, and the music video supports this assumption.  It was not until Lady Gaga announced that the song was about sexuality that people started hearing the hidden message.  She explained that she was bisexual, so she never told any of the men that she dated about it because she was worried that they might be uncomfortable if they knew.  Thus the lyric, “I’m bluffin’ with my muffin.”  Little children go around town singing these songs, but they do not realize what they are singing.  Since some of these messages are hard to catch, most just accept it.  However, there are some Lady Gaga songs that are not as subtle about the sexual meaning, and one song comes to mind.

            The song “Love Game” is clear about its message from the moment the song starts, “Let’s have some fun; this beat is sick!  I wanna’ take a ride on your disco stick!”  Saying that that she wants to take a ride implies sex, and the disco stick is referring to his penis.  The chorus of the song then implies that all of this is a game, “Let’s play a love game, play a love game.  Do you want love, or do you want fame, or you win the game?  (It’s) Called a love game!”  At no time does she refer to this all being done to find someone that she would like be in a relationships with; rather, she is just looking for a hookup.  In other words, this song is promoting promiscuity.

            Given what we talked about in class this past week, this song puts a different spin on hegemony.  Usually, men are the dominant ones, but here the power belongs to women.  Either way, small children walk around in public singing this song, not knowing that it is referring to a promiscuous woman.  This shows that pornographic actions are becoming more accepted in today’s world.  While I am a big fan of Lady Gaga, I am slightly disturbed when I hear children singing this particular song.

Gaga, L. (Performer). (2009). Love Game [Music video].

Femininity & Advertising- Sex in Media

This week in class, we talked about how sex is present in the media.  Our class discussions seemed to focus on how women are taken advantage of, and misrepresented in advertisements.  When we brought in advertisements from magazines, almost every one that was posted on the board was of a woman.  While I do agree that women are misrepresented, and taken advantage of by men in advertisements, I would like to point out that this happens to men in advertisements, too.

       

I will start with this example of an advertisement that I came across about Axe Body Spray.

In this advertisement, these women work as airport security.  They are clearly attracted to this young man, so they abuse their power, and set the detectors off.  Each time that the detector goes off, he is forced to remove an article of clothing.  This continues until he is naked.  If something like this were to happen in real life, these women would be fired from their jobs, and arrested. 

Since Axe Body Spray is geared toward men, I am confused as to why they would even want to show a man being humiliated by women in public in an advertisement.  In this case, it appears that the company did not realize that they were not targeting their proper audience.  This advertisement seems to want women to buy their product for their boyfriends, but it was quite a stretch.  

I will end this blog entry with a picture of a male model form Ambercrombie and Fitch.

 http://www.abercrombie.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Casting?catalogId=10901&storeId=10051&langId=-1
This company is known for setting false images with their models.  In this particular picture the model is shirtless, has a muscular body, and is wet.  This Ambercrombie is implying that men should be very muscular in order to fit in, or else no one will like them.  I, personally, have a problem with this.  This makes nonathletic men feel self-conscious about their bodies and appearance.

It does not seem as if advertisements will ever stop promoting sex.  The people producing the advertisements will continue to push the limits.  I think that if people would do something about it, instead of just complaining about it, then maybe it might stop.