Week 6 Apply and Reflect

 The male gaze is something often discussed for visual arts such as movies or paintings. However, music has also used the male gaze to describe women as sexual objects for heterosexual males. While there's a slew of songs describing how men would "go down on women" I think the best example of how men view women as sexual objects comes from the song The Girls of Porn by Mr Bungle, released in 1991. The song is about a man masturbating to a porn magazine, the women are a literal objects, pages for the narrator.

Here is a link to the song itself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7x_uBcg3DE
The song describes the women featured on the pages of the magazine, but ends with the narrator saying how he was trained to have sex with the women in the magazine. It's a great song in terms of its melody, beats, and instrumentals, though the way the song ends, has the implication that hes "training" himself for having sex with a future partner. Is it one of the girls in the magazine? Is it all of them?
The song is somewhat unique in how it sexualizes women in ways that most people would not associate with attractive things. Bestiality, necrophilia, incest, all the specific fetishes are there to fulfill ones every odd powered fantasy. This also adds into how the women are just objects, though the features one would normally use to describe the women such as their lip color or hips, are mostly absent. In the end hes still alone, no matter how much "training" he does.

While this song is just one example, there are plenty of songs that objectify women and their "role" in the song, is to please a man. Though there aren't many songs that make the women into literal objects for another person.

Dunn, Trevor. (1991). The Girls of Porn [Recorded by Mr.Bungle]. Mr.Bungle [Medium of recording]. Warner Music Group

Comments

  1. Allison BOctober 4, 2020 at 9:50 PM

    Hi Nathan, you did a great job on your reflection post. I never really thought about music being used in this way but now that I think about it I see it (while hear it). There are a lot of male artist that write music depicting women as sexual objects, while female artist don't really objectify another person in there music. A question I have for you is are there more example of music that depict women more as a object then a person? Overall, you did a great job!

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