I don’t usually listen to music of this time period, but I
chose this song because I remembered it from my childhood. When my brother and
I were five or six years old, we exhausted our parents with our energetic
outbursts. So that we would expend some of our energy and calm down before
bedtime, they would put on a CD of upbeat songs for us to dance to. We couldn't wait for the end of dinner every night, because first on the CD was one of our
favorites—Whatta Man.
Ten years later, I watched the music video, and my immediate
reaction was one of confusion. Where are the men? Never having seen the video
before, I assumed that, given the title and lyrical content, it would portray
men in a positive, dominant light. Though the song does this, the video puts a feminist
spin on it. I realized that the artists intended not only to entertain viewers,
but to encourage the power of women as well.
Despite being about a man, the video features women in the
spotlight almost the entire time. Always dancing in the fore- or background is
a woman (or two or twenty). This feature is not inherently unique, but what
sets this video apart is that the dancers are not showing off their perfect
bodies or trying to draw the eye of every guy in the room. Instead, they are
having fun moving to the beat. We aren’t dancing sex objects, says Salt ‘n’
Pepa; we’re just having a good time.
When the viewer finally gets a glimpse of the man in
question, the scene of a man exerting his dominance sexually over a woman,
almost expected in music of this genre and time period, never unfolds. Instead,
the woman is showing off her man, admiring his glistening muscles. The artists
reverse traditional gender roles by giving the woman the control. Maybe this
unconventional scene surprises viewers, but, the artists imply, it shouldn’t
come as a shock. Ideally, this should feel as normal as the gender roles we’re accustomed
to.
The most fundamental detail supporting this conclusion is
the gender of the artists themselves. Male rappers dominate the hip-hop genre,
and did so to an even greater extent before the 21st century. This
video challenges the misogynistic notion that “women can’t rap”—evidently they
can rap very well. The artists hope the strong presence of Salt ‘n’ Pepa and En
Vogue, both all-female groups, will encourage more women to rap.
The song doesn’t explicitly preach feminism in its lyrics;
instead it expresses its message more subtly. The presence of women in the video, the
portrayal of men, and the artists themselves support and encourage the role of
women in society.
Thanks Simon. For the second week in a row, I was reading the post and excited to see which student's name was at the end of it. For the second week in a row, the name was yours. Not only do you write technically well, but the topics you choose and the way you present them is stylistically engaging.
ReplyDeleteMost importantly, I think your analysis is correct. As I was reading it, I wasn't sure if it was a parody. The man that the women celebrate in the lyrics is an idealized man. He doesn't exist. In addition, the romance scenes quickly interjected throughout the video are almost laughable. What am I supposed to make of the woman on the bear rug? Perhaps this is another example of the female in the dominant position. Your analysis helped to clarify for me what the "authors'" intent was - to flip traditional gender roles. You're right. Whereas it would be most common to see women dancing to support male performers, in this video, it is the men who play the supporting role. Thanks for pointing that out.