a reflection of anger and sadness

Last night at the hotline, we watched Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video, which was fascinating in all sorts of ways.

The cover of the video on that page is a scene in a Limp Bizkit video of a song delightfully titled "Eat You Alive." In the video, Fred Durst has a bullhorn and is yelling at a girl who hasn't returned his lust and forces her to sit there and listen to him screaming out his anger at the situation.

Hey you, Mrs. too-good-to-look-my-way and that's cool you want nothing at all to do with me.
But I want you, ain't nothing wrong with wanting you cause I'm a man and I can think what the hell I want, you got that straight?
No doubt that (no doubt) I'd love to (I'd love) sniff on them panties now....

This is, of course, only up until the sweet part of the song where he romantically sings about just wanting to look at her until she gets a cute sparkle in her eye and is loving it. And then, we return to screaming at her. If you youtube the video and watch it, please take note of the beautiful flowers sitting next to the girl who is out in the forest with a band full of angry musicians and Fred Durst screaming in her face. Gives it a nice, romantic feel, don't ya think?

This is the part where I think, "I'd like to not listen to any and all music that is such complete shit." But holy hell, I'd have to boycott everything but Christian music. In the video we watched, from pop stars to country stars to hip-hip stars, each and every video revolves around the idea that women are:
a. unproportionately physically hot
b. there to please a man
c. incapable of functioning until a man swoops in and fixes things
d. nothing more than something with an ass crack that you can swipe an ATM card through for a laugh (there are a frightening number of videos in which this is done)
e-z: any and all of the other objectifications one can come up with for women

In one scene, we watched different women stand against the wall of a tour bas in either bikinis or entirely naked, while band members and roadies threw lunchmeat at them and laughed and giggled when they stuck to their asses.

Lunchmeat, people. It's apparently the hip rock 'n roll thing to do to open a package of bologna and throw it against some woman's bare ass. It's entertaining. And funny. And a good time. But really, all it is is taking something that's about as non-sexual as it gets and making it sexual in what you really can't argue is anything but a degrading way. Kind of like Led Zeppelin fucking a woman with a frozen fish. Whether the entire thing was shoved in her as some sources state, whether it was shark meat, whether it was just the nose of the fish, whether she was lovin' it or not...whatever happened, I've never nor will I ever, believe it was done for the sexual gratification of that woman. It was done because a bunch of coked out rock 'n rollers thought it'd be fun to use a woman and frozen fucking fish to get their rocks off.

But the point in the video that affected me the most was a single photograph, which I've managed to find online, taken in 2001 during Seattle's Mardi Gras celebration (something I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't even heard of until this video). I'm posting it here because it's been altered to at least protect her identify. And it's powerfully repulsive.

Check out the horror here

Then we cut right back to music videos where the people singing are doing the exact. same. thing. Sure, in videos, the women have bikinis on but really, the touching is exactly the same as in this photograph. It's amazing. Yet in the videos, it's overlooked. Nobody raises concerns when they see rap stars slappin' the asses of strippers and Snoop talkin' about "breakin' those hoes"? Where's the outrage there? In the Puerto Rican photos, a lot of them involve water and women being sprayed with hoses and water bottles, etc. Cut to music videos where women are constantly being sprayed with fire hoses or more often, champagne bottles. Seriously, music industry, I get it...your semen is the most valuable fucking thing out there and there are tons of things you can use in place of it since you can't actually cum on my face to music and sell it as a fucking video. I get it. The entire fuckin' world gets it. Knock it the fuck off.

This is the shit that baffles my mind and leads me to question those things like, "how do I do whatever I need to do to combat that?" What can I do other than write about it and maybe start ignoring most of any music even remotely mainstream (which I kind of do, simply because I don't listen to radio nor watch music videos). I can't boycott everything. And I can't shut myself off to the world nor do I want to. But if that's the case, how do I go about trying to fix it? What the hell can I do to even attempt to start chipping away at something that is so cemented into our culture?

I feel good after I hang up after taking a call at the hotline. I feel good when someone says, "thank you" before we hang up. Because I feel like I've helped, like I've done something. I can't look at that photograph without fighting back tears and I'm not really sure if it's purely because of the image and my inability to understand why the horde of men surrounding the woman look nothing but content and happy. Or because of how absolutely powerless it makes me feel.