Music videos have always been criticized for having huge amount of sexual content, especially to those of the rock videos by the start of the 21st century. It started to go enormous on the sexual side sometime in the 1970s, until it burst in the 1980s and went wild. By the 1990s, almost every music video had sexual content. In these videos, women were being portrayed as sexual objects, with stereotypical attitudes between genders, and the erotic content that, they say, captured the heart of the adolescents. This was seen in the music videos of two rock groups of the 1980s and 1990s—Aerosmith and Bon Jovi. They started in the ‘80s and continued until the mid-‘90s, where they had two of the most sought after narrative videos during the era: Aerosmith’s “Crying”, as well as, Bon Jovi’s “Always”. There is always sexuality in the music videos of the rock era, and it proves that women have always been taken as sex symbols, which degrades their right to be respected by all means.
Decline of 1980s Hard Rock
The music era of the 1990s reflected the decline of the 1980s hard rock and heavy metal, which were almost synonymous in the early ‘80s and were not separated into two distinct groups. When metal and thrash music entered in mid-‘80s, hard rock groups like Poison and Bon Jovi entered the world of music, together with Van Halen and Guns ‘n’ Roses. However, they had little impact in the 1990s because there was a significant change in the genre, specifically the attitude of the audience preferring rock music. Meanwhile, Bon Jovi stayed on top of the hard rock groups until the 1990s, although it was the time when the band members took break and started to release recordings for films and solo albums (Harrison 72). Among these is their recording album Crossroads (1996), from which their new single “Always” gained special attention to the rock audiences. Meanwhile, Aerosmith continued with their metal music until the mid-‘90s and released one of their last singles “Crying”, while other metallic bands like Nirvana created a new music trend. Aerosmith was more prominent in the 1980s, although they had other music singles that topped the chart in the 1990s, such as “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” used as music trailer of a movie. Together with Aerosmith’s “Crying” and Bon Jovi’s “Always”, these music videos portrayed sexual undertones, with distorted images of women’s sexuality and the source of men’s pleasure.
Aerosmith’s Crying
Aerosmith’s music video of their song “Crying” was portrayed with a narrative plot. In the music video, the protagonist woman entered a movie house and saw her boyfriend kissing another woman, which made her angry she left the movie house. Then it shows her driving a car with her boyfriend somewhere in the desert. She made some sexual advances to the guy, and then suddenly punches him and pushes him out of the car, and then begins to drive away. Next, she was shown sitting in front of a man who is putting a tattoo right at her left chest, to draw the other half of the heart, so that she would not need the other half of the heart drawn at the right hand of her boyfriend. Then, a scene was shown where she was making love with her boyfriend, and then suddenly wakes up in her dream, sitting in the same car, as she was just imagining or remembering the scene. She stops the car at the side of the road, puts on her pants, and begins to walk away. Next, she was shown sitting inside a lab, and a man was punching a hole in her bellybutton, before she was shown sitting in a restaurant and smiling at another man, who smiles back at her and then suddenly picks up her bag and runs away. The woman runs after the robber and gets her bag back, and goes inside a phone booth talking to her boyfriend. She stands on top of a high bridge, where many vehicles were shown below, and she was on the verge of letting herself fall down below. There were many policemen, and her boyfriend approaches her to reconsider her plan and stop herself from jumping down the high bridge. The woman falls down the bridge, only to be hung by a rope that was secured on her pants. In the end, she laughs at her boyfriend.
This video shows the wildness and sexual ferocity of the teenagers during the ‘90s era. However, it does not show the weakness of the female gender but the opposite of it, as females are shown to have their own minds, showing how woman are capable of fighting back, even to robbers and men who are only using them. What makes the video unusual is that the woman protagonist reflects the way female teenagers think and act during the specific era in the 1990s, showing them to have their own minds, much like the other men. More so, this video is memorable because the woman protagonist was shown to have the courage to jump down a high bridge, which was very unlikely for a woman to do. It shows that women can decide on their own, and if their boyfriends are making use of them, then they can look for another man to be their boyfriend. It does not reveal exploitation and degradation of women but the fact that they have the strength to fight so that they are loved in return.
Bon Jovi’s Always
Bon Jovi’s music video of their song “Always” also had a narrative plot. In the music video, a man was shown sitting on his bed inside his room, and then looking at a picture of a woman. He remembers the time when they were making love while riding on his car. Next, they were shown inside the room of the woman, where she was shown wearing a black nighties and posing in front of her boyfriend, who was holding the video camera. Her boyfriend leaves the camera on top of the chair, and then was cut with scenes of pornography and sex of the band and their audiences during the concert. Then, the couple was shown entering the house and passing by the woman’s sister, who was lying on the sofa. They begin having sex, and when her sister opens the television, she sees the sexual activities done by the couple, and watches them. Next, the woman was shown entering the house, and sees the video of her boyfriend who does sexual advances to her sister, so she enters the room and throws things at them. The woman runs away and ends up at the door of a male artist’s exhibiting room. He begins to paint her, and then wakes up lying in bed. She stands and looks at her painting, before calling up her boyfriend. Her boyfriend arrives in the art room, sees the painting, and begins to smash at the painting, after seeing signs that her girlfriend spent a night in bed with the painting artist. Her girlfriend leaves the room, and he puts an explosive inside the room. He was shown back inside his own room like at the start of the narrative video. He sees an image of his girlfriend and approaches her, only to know it was pure imagination, and that her girl was nowhere in sight, as if she had died.
This video shows misogyny and the weakness and vulnerability of the female gender as well as “sexualization of women and the dominance of men over women” (Oosten, Peter and Valkenburg 3). Women are shown to be the object of aggressive sexual advances by aggressive, dominant men. There is also female submissiveness, which emphasizes male power and their control over women, who are seen merely as sexual objects. However, what makes the video unusual is the huge amount of sexual connotation behind the different scenes, and even in the concert scenes of the band. Inside the concert stadium, there were women clothed in nighties who were swinging on the topmost part of the stadium above the audience, while the guitarists were shown to having sexual activities with women. However, what makes it memorable is that, it implies that sex can also lead to death and not just pleasure. It reveals the degradation of women, and that they are being portrayed as sexual objects who cannot make wise judgments of their own. Thus, they end up being victims of violence, sexual abuse, and misperception, as they need protection from the male specie.
Comparing the Two Music Videos
If analyzed, both music videos of Aerosmith and Bon Jovi are alive with sexual undertones and reveals the role of women in two different worlds. In the Aerosmith’s “Crying”, women in the city area are capable of fighting back and having a mind of their own. They have the courage to do the unthinkable, and can use their minds so that their boyfriends would go back to them. This is very different from the woman in Bon Jovi’s “Always”, wherein women in the rural areas tend to show weakness and vulnerability against the dominance of men. There is female submissiveness and less power over the side of the women, as they are merely taken as sexual objects by the society, especially of men. Thus, they become victims of violence, crime, abuse, illnesses, and death. Still, both music videos reveal the pornographic imagination of people during the 1990s, in which sexual activities are usually used for entertainment, such as in films and music videos. There is therefore, a male attitude of sexual aggression on the side of men, while women on the other hand, use sexuality to “unfairly manipulate men” (Aubrey, Hopper and Mbure 361). Aubrey, Hopper and Mbure adds that “women are portrayed as sex objects by the use of revealing or provocative clothing, typically displaying excessive skin exposure” (362). This is true, as seen in both hard rock music videos of Aerosmith and Bon Jovi during the mid-1990s.
Conclusion
Music videos are like films, as both portray a narrative story, with a plot and artists to suggest that a story is being generated, and behind the scenes is a moral issue that suggest something that is crucial. Music narratives can be discovered through close reading, as revealed in the two music videos of Aerosmith and Bon Jovi, it depicts the sexual connotation of women in a society where men remain to be dominant over women. Women are more likely to be seen as sexual objects and nothing more. However, they also have the tendency to portray themselves as sexual beings “to achieve control of their sexuality, and to make assertions of female strength and autonomy” (Oosten, Peter and Valkenburg 4). This is seen in Aerosmith’s “Crying” of how women in the city areas think and act. As seen in the two music videos, sexuality had become prevalent in the rock era, and it proved that women had always been taken as sex symbols, which degraded their right to be respected by others. Still, the following generation started to change the thoughts of women in the city districts, for they too had a right of their own, and were more than merely sexual objects of the male specie.
Works Cited:
Aubrey, Jennifer Stevens, Megan Hopper, and Wanjiru Mbure. “Check That Body! The Effects of Sexually Objectifying Music Videos on College Men’s Sexual Beliefs.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 55.3 (2011): 360-379.
Harrison, Thomas. American History through Music: Music of the 1990s. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2011. Print.
Oosten, Johanna M.F. van, Jochen Peter and Patti Valkenburg. “The Influence of Sexual Music Videos on Adolescents’ Misogynistic Beliefs: The Role of Video Content, Gender, and Affective Engagement.” Communication Research (2015): 1-23. Web. 25 January 2016.
Other Sources:
AerosmithVEVO. “Crying.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 23 Dec. 2009. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.
BonJoviVEVO. “Always.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 16 June 2009. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.
