TECNICAS E INSTRUMENTOS PARA LA RECOLECCION DE INFORMACIÓN

Media may be thought of as a key factor in the constitution of the public sphere where people ‘make sense’ of the world, discuss the information they receive and participate in rational decisions concerning political and public issues (McGuigan, 1996).

Music, because of its powerful influence on society (discussed in Part 1), is considered a

kind of mass media which is worth an analysis in this thesis. According to Wood (2009),

media portrays gender in both traditional and non-traditional ways and music, and more

importantly, lyrics, can function as social mirrors providing the listener with a description

of the world they live in and an aide to the construction of their social identity (Seitz,

1991). Although consumers tend to believe that media does not affect them, media affects

our upbringing, identity, and relationships with others (Wood, 2005). Music can be

recreational, educational, social, emotional, therapeutic, or spiritual (Hays et al., 2002) and

has an important effect on our lives. Pop music is distributed through more media than any

other form of popular culture. “The space a musical artist occupies in popular culture is

33 _{This word has been blended by Nieto (2012). The original in the article by Rossi (2007) was “streetscape”.}

multi-textual. Lyrics, interviews, music and videos together create a collage, often finely

planned, out of which we are supposed to form impressions” (Perry 2003, 141). The accent here is put on the music imagery presented to the general public, not only in the lyrics but

also in video clips, record sleeves, etcetera, and its effect on people.

Mundy (1999: 224) suggests the term “music video aesthetic” at work across a range of contemporary cultural forms, including television, cinema and advertising. Thus

the link between the production of music and visual texts works on a number of levels.

One of those contemporary forms of visual texts that music mingles with is pornography

and sex. In the neo-liberal context of celebrating individual freedoms, and a context of

wider access via the internet, pornography has become increasingly de-regulated (Sears

2011). With this de-regulation, images from the media sphere of pornography are

mainstreamed and normalised in the everyday cultural realm, a process that has been called

pornification (Attwood 2006; Paasonen et al, 2007). Authors like McNair (2002) Attwood

(2006) or Paasonen et al. (2007) discuss the close relationship between sex and the media

in the twenty-first century. Sex has become much more culturally visible– more a public

than a private self-expression– and media of all kinds have become central in how sexual

identities and lifestyles are understood and maintained (Attwood, 2011). As McNair (2002:

87, 98) has argued, these developments are also part of a media trend that foregrounds

lifestyles, ‘reality’, interactivity and confession; a form of ‘striptease culture’ that can be understood as part of a broader preoccupation with self-revelation, exposure and ‘public

intimacy’.

The constant sexualisation of women by themselves and by men in songs, leads to

talk about an increasing pornification both verbally and visually: it appears that the

aesthetics of the porn industry is hijacking other sectors of everyday life, such as music

stardom” (Levande, 2007: 308). The use of the Internet for sex, love, and culture,

demonstrate a reframing of porn for younger audiences as part of a new ‘smart sex culture’ (Attwood, 2010), as will be explained below. Porn is now being distributed in quite

different commercial and generational communities. A wide range of media texts

(pornography, music videos, celebrity publications, etc.), goods (toys, clothes and

accessories) and practices (pole exercise, ‘sexy’ dancing), are considered to have a new

and pernicious impact on young people (Attwood, 2011).

Magazines depict representations of the ‘perfect’ woman as very thin and attractive, and the ‘perfect’ man as strong and athletic. One of the effects is the pressure on women and men (and particularly on teenagers) to live up to unrealistic representations of their

bodies or their relationships. The vast array of airbrushed images claiming that super slim

women have the ‘perfect beach body’ lead young readers to believe that there is no other image worth aspiring to (Brooks, 2008). Talbot (1998) states that:

Women actively participate, spending on it [femininity] their creative energies and time, as well as their money. Fashion and beauty standards are shaped by the manufacturing, advertising, fashion and magazine industries, which offer a range of material and symbolic resources for creating femininity. In participating in consumer femininity, a woman constructs herself as an object requiring work, establishing a practical relation with herself as a thing. This work is always required: no one can approximate the kinds of appearance offered without effort and expense (Talbot, 1998: 172).

Machin & Thornborrow (2003) show that, for example, Cosmopolitan magazine creates a

fantasy world, where women acquire power through the clothes they wear and places they

frequent, but also through sex, seduction and social manoeuvring. Every individual who

appears in the magazine is performing a role, or ‘acting up’. Readers are supposed to know

Parallelisms with this situation in magazines can also be found in the world of

music. As Whiteley (2000: 218) points out, it seems that media coverage is identifying and

constructing a more tabloid-defined audience with an interest in sexual rather than musical.

“Pop music is intimately connected with the pornography industry as today’s pop stars embrace and exalt the joys of porn” (Paul, 2005). Now, record labels and the strip-club industry are working in tandem. If the record is successful in a strip club, it is a good

indicator it will sell (Mitchell 2006: 29-30). Levande (2007) remarks that pop stars have

recently become an advertising claim to sell other products. For example, music celebrities

endorse products and sell their own cosmetics and clothing lines. Levande keeps on developing this idea and deduces the following: “If actual products can be assigned to pop stars, then so can ideologies” (2007: 301), an apparently true enough statement to be

convincing and agreeable for this study.

But why the abandonment of romance in favour of foreplay, condoms and sexual

pleasure both in magazines and music?. McRobbie (1999: 53-55) points out that romance

has withered away and is now an outdated code for constructing the dominant narrative of

female sexuality. This has now been replaced by much more overtly sexual material. The

explanation provided by publishers and academics alike is that sex sells more copies and

increases benefits. McRobbie (1999: 130) claims that breaking down the myth of romantic

love, which most women have been exposed to in popular culture (and music), has been

necessary for survival and for participating in a much crueller and disappointing world. It

is important “to be mindful of the way that record companies are also active in this process

of sexualisation of music, taking an important role in shaping the image of artists, in

seeking market position and addressing audiences” (Machin, 2010: 28). The big record

companies are interested in profit maximisation and artists might be manipulated by their record labels, seduced by monetary gain and therefore ‘sell out’. Worst of all, some bands

and artists become the product of a label, deliberately designed and marketed to appeal to

particular listeners (Machin, 2010: 29). CDA studies the effect of big companies and the

media on the discourse of marketing and product sales to convey ideas and messages. The

media (as influential social agents in our postmodern times) play an important role in

setting the parameters of what constitutes expected gendered behaviour (for women much

more stringently than for men). Therefore, the presence of sexualised messages in lyrics is

worth discussing.