Women and the art of the music video

Yesterday, I watched some music videos by Madonna, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears and Selena Gomez.  That list is in chronological order for the emergence of these performers.

I want to mention, before I write about these women, that quite obviously none of them cares that people are being criminally victimized every day by hidden, illegal cameras in bathrooms throughout the Boston area, as evidenced by all of them doing nothing about it, just like their male counterparts.

I watched the music videos, and some others by men, having remembered them as being visually interesting and thematically coherent, even when some of the content is not what I would have chosen.

Madonna was the clear winner of all of them in terms of concept, depth and artistry.  Every video of hers that I watched was different from the one before it.  Each was meticulously constructed, which she and those whom she worked with understood is what gives an artist the freedom to be expressive.  There was no such thing as showing up, shooting footage and hoping that some of it works out.  I'm not saying that the latter method never yields things which are appealing and even poignant, but it's less work and is less apt to be artistically successful and enduring.

What's prompting me to write this page is that, having had since yesterday to think about these videos, I am struck by the change from one generation of female performer to the next.  The videos that I watched yesterday suggested a progression from a time when female performing artists felt they had to fight for and defend their right to be creators rather than objects, vessels or muses, and that this fight was conflated for them with historically male ideas about gender and power.  Even while starring in their own videos and trying to forge their own paths, the earlier female artists show the conflict with an emphasis on their bodies that is self-conscious and defiant.  Although the youngest, Selena Gomez, confronts gender disparity in the video that I watched yesterday, she does so by expressing her feelings about it from her individual experience.  In 2014, that counted for something, finally, after all of the years of women feeling the burden of having to fight to have a place to be something other than the embodiment of a male idea.

For the most part, the videos that I watched yesterday were still confined to the realm of gender relations.  That sphere, although it continues to be both vital and problematic, is too small for female artists to be defined by today.  I know that all of the women whom I'm writing about at this page have confronted other issues; I'm not belittling or condescending to them.