Performing Gender: A Content Analysis of Gender Display in Music Videos by Cara Walls. Research consisted of 84 unique videos both of male and female performers recorded from the U.S. most watched cable stations of MTV and MTV2. 65 of the videos were male performers while only 17 were of female performers. The videos were broken down into 30 second segments and any duplicates were eliminated. Study was done to try and investigate the differences males and females play in music videos. Twelve nonverbal displays were chosen for coding and four hypotheses were put to test. Subordinate Nonverbal Behavior of Females, Dominant Nonverbal Behavior of Males, More Overt Sexuality Displayed by Females and More Aggressive Display by Males. The primary focus of this research being what are the gender displays of male and female lead performers in their music videos and how do they differ from one another? And even though society has accepted new norms and trends into our culture like those of "emo" emotional rock, "riot grrrls" and "girl power" males and females still uphold the same stereotypical gender role as before. The finding in this research were that females display more subordinate behaviors than males while males displaying dominant nonverbal behavior was not confirmed. Female performers display overt sexuality compared to males was confirmed and the last finding being that male performers display more aggressive behavior that female performers was partially confirmed. Gender displays shows that the institutionalized sexism persists in media representations even as of today.
My second article was Cosmopolitan preference: The constitutive role of place in American elite taste for hip-hop music 1991-2005. The American elite have established themselves as the "trend setters", such as in music, fashion, and entertainment. How does location fall into the constitutive role of the American elite and there taste for hip-hop? There are three place based criteria in which they base their judgments of the genre on. The first, rap must be meaningful, secondly, the "ghettoes" must be present and are central for it to be meaningful, and lastly, international scenes are privileged as politically and overall more important than American scenes are. Not so long ago, they perceived hip-hop/rap as a violent, socially harmful, and deserving of censure genre, but now it is legitimized as a high-status taste by the American elite. This shows that the American elite do not follow the French model of snobbish opposition of high status verses mass taste, and more importantly affirms that they are omnivores. Researchers use reception theory (a theory that observes how people judge specific objects, not just genre categories) to legitimize hip hop as an elite taste. Place was also used to base their criteria and legitimize low status inclusions to the broadening elite palate by its authenticity and exoticism. Elites do not hold all cultural products within a genre in equal esteem. They use place meanings to indicate which objects can be referred to as being of high status. New York City is widely accepted as the "birthplace of hip hop", more specifically in the south Bronx where disc jockeys would chop up and recombine music on a multitude of turntables, and were later joined by rhyming rappers. Hip hop/rap later spread from the east coast to the west coast and in the 90's a bitter feud between both sides had started. The two main rappers in the feud were Tupac Shakur (west coast rapper) and Christopher G. Wallace a.k.a Notorious B.I.G. and Biggie Smalls (east coast rapper). Inevitably both were killed in a drive by shooting. They rapped about easy woman, gun toting, and the gangster street life. All spawned by growing up in the poverty of the inner city. Although that is what eventually cost them their lives. Rap went from only being in the ghetto and the streets to having worldwide recognition. Hip hop/rap influenced everything from television to fashion, to even the way people spoke. It was also used in politics; it was a way that the blacks from the ghetto got their point across to society. The elite started to see the influence and incorporated rap into their elite palate. International rap combined both their local sounds with U.S. rap to create a new sound that grew in popularity even in the states. They legitimized it by basing it on certain criteria's to qualify as a high status taste. It had to be pure, that meant the rapper had to come from the ghetto and rap about his experiences as person growing up in poverty, around violence and drugs. It also couldn't be influenced by big businesses and major corporations. The elite prefer international over domestic for being innovative and aesthetically more pleasing than domestic rap. It seems the American elite have assimilated hip-hop/rap into their palate of high status culture due to its influence in society and its impact on trends worldwide.
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