Nudity, femininity and the animal kingdom: Would Robin Thicke objectify a woman?

As I have mentioned previously, Miley Cyrus was not the first to take her clothes off in a music video, nor will she be the last. Another video which has drawn attention recently due to its inclusion of bare-breasted women is Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines', otherwise known as 'gender equality: you are doing it wrong'. In this little gem, women dance around the besuited Mr Thicke and his partners in cultural crime, Pharrell Williams and T.I., also fully clothed at all times.

 However, what is potentially more problematic than the severe imbalance in clothing distribution is the whole narrative of domestication, and narrative of women as animals. He sings:

Ok now he was close, tried to domesticate you
but you're an animal, baby it's in your nature

Just let me liberate you
You don't need no papersThat man is not your maker

On its own, this could be read as an affirmation of the merry topless women's independence: they don't need boyfriends, because they are free agents. But this is undermined by Mr Thicke's offer to 'liberate' them, and also by the rather tawdry little rap sequence later on: 

One thing I ask of you
Let me be the one you back that ass to
[...]
Yeah, I had a bitch, but she ain't bad as you
So hit me up when you pass through
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two
[...]
Nothing like your last guy, he too square for you
He don't smack that ass and pull your hair like that

*Shudder* I'm not going to bother analyzing that part. Add to that the line 'you the hottest bitch in this place', and there's really no saving it. It's not made much better by the sentence 'Robin Thicke has a big Dick' spelled out in helium balloons. That just makes me think 'FREUD!' very loudly, and assume that Mr Thicke's penis must be average-to-small in size. I then get frustrated by the fact that I have been manipulated into thinking about the size of someone's penis, when that is clearly a waste of my cognitive ability and I could be doing better things with my time. 

There has been some debate over whether this video truly objectifies women, as the creators have argued that they are mocking explicit pop videos by including references to all that is taboo, including nudity, drug use and bestiality. Furthermore, one of the topless women has stated that she did not feel objectified, and she wanted to undermine the nudity taboo. All very admirable. However, rather like Ms Cyrus, the model in question has missed the point about objectification: it does not require the object's consent. While the fact that she is able to speak publicly about her performance and provide a reading of her own nudity which counters the general assumption that she is being objectified does go some way towards recontextualizing the video, she is nevertheless naked and surrounded by clothed men singing about her as an object of desire.

However, this whole thing could be read as not so much an attempt to shamelessly objectify women with merry abandon, as a poor, confused man's cry for help. This would be summed up in the image of a naked ass with a stop sign on it towards the end of the video:

Mr Thicke sings 'I hate these blurred lines/ I know you want it', suggesting that although he is convinced that the woman in question would like to have sexual relations with him, he feels inhibited from making any concrete moves in that direction by social conventions. So Mr Thicke is admirably resisting the mixed messages sent by the objectification of women in a society which claims to support gender equality, and keeping his allegedly large penis in his very tight trousers. Perhaps he is a little bit socially awkward, and found it hard to talk to topless women at parties when he was a teenager, because really they are quite scary. The smallness of the stop sign presumably suggests that the fact that nudity does not constitute a sexual invitation is difficult to grasp, and one could be forgiven for trying to have sex with someone who just happened to be naked, but didn't actually consent. Or does it?

While there is no question that the lyrics are sexually suggestive, Mr Thicke's part does not at any point suggest that crossing these 'blurred lines' is acceptable; he repeatedly issues the invitation 'come on, get at me', and expresses his frustration at his inability to assess whether this woman is interested in him or not. He mentions 'the way you grab me', but isn't doing any grabbing himself. Perhaps what is more irritating, and potentially sinister as well, is his insistence on the fact that the addressee is a 'good girl'. In fact, it is her status as 'good girl' that is playing havoc with his semantics, because if she were a 'bad girl' it would be obvious that she wanted potentially physically harmful sex, there would be no 'blurred lines' to contend with, and everyone would live happily ever after, apart from the occasional STD. Either way, it's clearly the woman's fault. Right?

The (anti?)feminist discourse of Miley Cyrus's bare bottom

Recently, Ms Cyrus has been the Talk of the Town: first, there was that infamous MTV VMA performance, in which she stripped down to her underwear and mimed pleasuring herself with a foam finger, then there was the video clip in which she appeared writhing around on a wrecking ball wearing nothing but a pair of safety boots. When asked about the latter, she claimed to have been influenced by Sinead O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares To You' video, leading to Ms O'Connor writing a series of open letters, attempting in vain to show Ms Cyrus how she had entirely missed the point, and warning her of potentially dire consequences of her objectification. Curiosity compelled me to watch both the VMA performance and the wrecking ball video, and there raised several questions for me:

1) In the context of common practice in Pop music, are Ms Cyrus's performances that unusual?

2) When is nudity objectification and when is it art?

3) Does the objectification of Ms C's body spell the death of feminism?

Before I answer these questions, here is a brief summary of my impressions of the two offending articles, for those unwilling to tarnish their retinas and/or souls by watching the originals:

Exhibit A: The Twerking Incident
This is MC's MTV VMA Performance: the act opens with her flouncing out of the innards of a giant teddy bear, wearing a leotard with some sort of demented mouse on the front, her tongue hanging out like she's caught some sort of rare sheep disease; as though she were innocently on her way to a pre-teen modern

dance class when she suddenly became the first victim of a zombie apocalypse. She proceeds with a dance routine that would not have been entirely alien to the aforementioned pre-teen modern dance class, with the exception of the occasional crotch thrust, and bending over and shaking her bum, a move apparently called 'twerking'. The song in the background pronounces that 'It's our party, we'll do what we want'.
Following this, she rips off her leotard to reveal something resembling a beige 1950s bikini,

proceeds to mime pleasuring herself with a foam finger, and repeats the 'twerking' move, this time rubbing her bum against a somewhat lecherous-looking male singer who is wearing a thick striped black and white suit that makes him look like a used-car salesman. The chorus to the song for this scene is 'You're such a good girl. I know you want it.' So far, so tasteless, but hardly unusual for the world of pop.

Exhibit B: The Nudity Incident
This is Miley Cyrus's video for the song 'Wrecking Ball'. It opens with a closeup of MC's face, wearing vast amounts of mascara and red lipstick, with artfully controlled tears rolling down her synthetic-looking cheeks.


This, she claims, was inspired by Sinead O'Connor's 1990 video for 'Nothing Compares 2U'.

While O'Connor's video consists mainly of close-ups of the singer's face with some tears towards the end, Cyrus's goes on to show the singer writhing in her underwear in a partially demolished building. Then she is seen swinging around on a wrecking ball wearing nothing but her boots.

At one point, she also licks a hammer. The song itself is about the dissolution of a relationship, in which Cyrus describes herself as a well-intentioned 'wrecking ball', who only wanted to break down the nameless addressee's defenses. And yet, apparently, it is her who is wrecked. Whatever.

1) In the context of common practice in Pop music, are Ms Cyrus's performances that unusual?

No, they are not. So why are Miley Cyrus's performances more shocking than other semi-naked and sexualized women's pop videos?

To a large extent, what makes MC's 'sexy dancing' disturbing is the fact that she still effectively looks like a child. At the age of 20, she could still easily pass for about fourteen, and so her objectification is more disturbing than that of an older-looking woman, as her claims to be making her own decisions appear less credible. To some extent, this may be her motivation for engaging in shock tactics: having become famous as a child, to a child-audience, she wants to prove that she has grown up by presenting herself as seductive as well as capable of great emotion.

Unfortunately, the effect is cringe-inducing, rather than artistically effective. The extreme stylization of her video makes her emotion appear fake, while the protrusion of her apparently still-budding breasts through a ribbed vest evokes the horror of the image of an objectified child. By comparison, the scenes where she is wearing nothing and swinging around on the wrecking ball are a relief, because at least nothing controversial is actually visible- it reminds me of naked calendars you can buy, made by various amateur sports clubs to raise money, where sporting equipment hides the subject's intimate areas: not very shocking, and a bit twee.

To return to the VMA performance, Cyrus appears to be deliberately deconstructing her previous public persona: the demented mouse leotard is a corruption of Mickey Mouse who represents wholesome childhood, while all the sad-faced dancing teddy-bears and suchlike follow a similar theme. She keeps pointing to her sexuality, literally, by pointing to her vagina. But while I find comedians, such as Sarah Millican, making jokes about vaginas both funny and pleasantly challenging to social convention, Miley's performance reminded me more of a little girl I knew, aged two: during nappy changes, she would point at her bum, and say 'bum!' with an extremely smug look on her face, showing her pride in discovering the location of her bum, and knowing the word by which to identify it. Similarly, Miley seems to have discovered her vagina, but unfortunately has not yet learned the words to articulate her joy in this discovery.

2) When is nudity objectification and when is it art?
If the impressionists could get away with painting naked women in the nineteenth century, why can't Miley swing around naked on a wrecking ball to her heart's content?
Well, in order for something to qualify as an artistic expression, it has to contain some semblance of a meaning, as well as a modicum of originality. Probably. In the case of Ms Cyrus' VMA performance, it is difficult to argue that it could constitute art, as it appears to be a cynical agglomeration of titillating footage with no message other than a promotion of hedonistic partying, which, frankly, is no longer in any way original. 'Wrecking Ball', on the other hand, could have a case for being art: it appeals to a universal human emotion, namely the pain experienced as a result of rejection, much in the same way that 'Nothing Compares 2U' does. That emotion does come across through Ms Cyrus' facial expressions, if not through her body movement. And the scene in which she swings around naked on a wrecking ball could be interpreted as, rather than a poor excuse for gratuitous nudity, an expression of the nihilistic vulnerability of the subject of emotional rejection. Of course, all these readings are undermined by Ms Cyrus' comments on Twitter, which generally suggest that she has the depth of emotion of a creme cracker and the intelligence of the average tree frog, coupled with an unshakable conviction that she is right and everyone else is wrong - but who can blame her? That's what being twenty is all about.

3) Does the objectification of Ms C's body spell the death of feminism?
No - not more so than any other objectified woman in a pop video does. However, it does show that gender equality is still a long way off.
Pop music has never been a particularly feminist-friendly discourse. Take, for example, the Spice Girls: they allegedly supported the idea of 'Girl Power', and represented a range of articulations of femininity. However, according to the Spice Girls' model, girls could either be Sporty, Sexy, Baby, Ginger, Scary or Posh. None of these are particularly helpful in a real-world context, and with the exception of Sporty all involve wearing extremely short dresses.
If one takes a lipstic feminist position, Miley Cyrus' current public persona could represent a re-appropriation of her body and femininity through the open enactment of her sexuality and the flaunting of her nudity. However, due to the creme cracker - tree frog hypothesis detailed above, this reading seems far-fetched. It is exceedingly likely that Ms Cyrus' performances are doing nothing but perpetuate the sinister objectification of women in popular music culture, often to a vulnerable audience who were introduced to her in her insipid but safe incarnation as Hannah Montana. Is the world likely to end as a result? No. With any luck, one day she will put her pants back on and produce some music that doesn't perpetuate all that is bad in the world, both aurally and ideologically. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Death and the Father: ‘Chop Suey’

The figure of the Father is a staple of Heavy Metal lyrics, not least because these often tend to engage with Christianity, a religion centred on the figure of the Father. Three songs in which the father as Father makes notable appearances are Chop Suey, Chop Suey, by System of a Down, and Enter Sandman and The Thorn Within by Metallica. All three songs use samples of Christian prayer or scripture within their text, emphasising the connection between father figure and God. I will begin with a reading of ‘Chop Suey’.

Chop Suey

Chop Suey is made up of three sections: verse, chorus and bridge. The verse consists of a list of statements in the second person:

Wake up

Grab a brush and put on a little makeup.

Hide the scars to fade away the shake-up.

Why’d you leave the keys upon the table?

Here you go, create another fable.

The first three lines are instructions which can be read as commands to conform to a set of social standards, especially as lines two and three concern appearance. The flow of instructions is broken by the question ‘Why’d you leave the keys upon the table?’ the trivial nature of which highlights the aggression of this passage. The accusation that the addressee is creating ‘another fable’ hints at a general habit of dishonesty.

In the second iteration of the verse, the phrase ‘you wanted to’ repeated after lines 2-5, which could be interpreted as a suggestion that the primary victim of this dishonesty is the self. ‘You wanted to’ could refer to a desire to perform each of the actions listed above, or it could be read as a general desire to conform, which results in the necessity of such traumatic acts as hiding scars and creating fables. This is an interesting reflection on free will, especially read in the quasi-religious context of the rest of the lyrics.

The chorus is a first-person soliloquy about suicide:

I don’t think you trust in my self-righteous suicide

I cried when angels deserve to die

In my self-righteous suicide

I cry when angels deserve to die

The introduction of the first-person problematises the first stanza, as it does not clarify whether there are one or two subjects involved in this discussion. Specifically, it is unclear whether the ‘you’ in the chorus is the same subject as the ‘you’ in the verse. One can read it as an altercation between self and double, or as a confrontation between insider and Other.

In the bridge, the figure of the Father is introduced with a dramatic repetition of the word, which can be read as a cry of despair or an invocation. This Father can be interpreted as God or the speaker’s father, depending on whether you want to be religious of Freudian. The invocation leads into a prayer of despair:

Father into your hands

I commit my spirit,

Father into your hands

Why have you forsaken me?

In your eyes forsaken me?

In your thoughts forsaken me?

In your heart forsaken me?

The above supports the idea of the father as God, as it is a mixture of two of Jesus’ statements on the cross:

'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit' (Luke23:46)

'My God, My God, why have you forsaken me' (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34).

The structure of the verse with its repetitions of ‘forsaken me’ is reminiscent of the prayer ‘God be in my head’:

God be in my head and in my understanding
God be in my eyes and in my looking
God be in my mouth and in my speaking
God be in my heart and in my thinking
God be at my end and at my departing

The prayer ends with death; similarly, Chop Suey’s text progresses from a dialectic pattern of question and answer to the final command:

Trust in my
self-righteous suicide

This indicates the speaker’s embracing of death, which could be read as an attempt to seize control of the body from the Father through the murder of the self. Perhaps the suggestion is that it is not possible to separate the self from the figure of the Father without bringing about its complete destruction.