Are Women represented as sex objects in rap videos

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Are Women represented as sex objects in rap videos?

                                              50 Cent’s P.I.M.P

Rap music started in the late 1970’s early 1980’s and was the first form of socio-political views in music, with the likes of Run DMC, NWA, Tupac & many more. They expressed about soul and the hardship of slavery, much like the Griots, a tribe from the roots of Africa. They were the founders of Rap music. Griots were storytellers, most commonly found in the west of Africa, who orally told villagers stories to a beat. The majority of Griots were slaves and were expressing their freedom from all the pain and torture they had to tolerate. Soon, this oral expression materialized into rap music where people articulated about their pleasures and their lives. They also spoke about the suffering in their own lives. However today rap has changed for the worst – it’s all about self promoting, ‘Pussy, Money, Weed’ and glorifying violence. No longer is rap about what was important – what rap was all about. I believe that rap has also changed in a negative way. It is now becoming the evil vein of society, pumping in the glorification of violence. Brainwashing people. Making them believe that money is the only pleasure and it can buy anything. Rap manipulates young people, assuring them that misogyny is perfectly fine, when it isn’t.   As a result of this negative change of rap music I will analysing a modern day rap video and will be using mise-en-scene to focus on some of the main aspects of within 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P. There will be analysis of the lyrics, the camera angles and shots, the setting, the actions and rappers within 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P.

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How can anyone not think that women are sex objects when all they see is the deliberate close-ups of their bodies over and over again? The use of the camera angles in the video plays a very powerful part in drawing the attention of the viewers to the bodies (especially the sex organs) of these women covered in oil and who are scantily clad with their face never shown and the camera always focussing on the sexual organs, which symbolises that their body is more important than their identity. When the face is shown rarely in the video it is ...

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