MTO 23.2: Lafrance, Finding Love in Hopeless Places
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Finding Love in Hopeless Places: Complex Relationality and Impossible Heterosexuality in Popular Music Videos by Pink and Rihanna Marc Lafrance and Lori Burns KEYWORDS: Pink, Rihanna, music video, popular music, cross-domain analysis, relationality, heterosexuality, liquid love ABSTRACT: This paper presents an interpretive approach to music video analysis that engages with critical scholarship in the areas of popular music studies, gender studies and cultural studies. Two key examples—Pink’s pop video “Try” and Rihanna’s electropop video “We Found Love”—allow us to examine representations of complex human relationality and the paradoxical challenges of heterosexuality in late modernity. We explore Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of “liquid love” in connection with the selected videos. A model for the analysis of lyrics, music, and images according to cross-domain parameters ( thematic, spatial & temporal, relational, and gestural ) facilitates the interpretation of the expressive content we consider. Our model has the potential to be applied to musical texts from the full range of musical genres and to shed light on a variety of social and cultural contexts at both the micro and macro levels. Received December 2016 Volume 23, Number 2, June 2017 Copyright © 2017 Society for Music Theory [1.1] This paper presents and applies an analytic model for interpreting representations of gender, sexuality, and relationality in the words, music, and images of popular music videos. To illustrate the relevance of our approach, we have selected two songs by mainstream female artists who offer compelling reflections on the nature of heterosexual love and the challenges it poses for both men and women. Unlike many love songs in the pop genre, Rihanna’s “We Found Love” (2011) and Pink’s “Try” (2012) do not romanticize relationships by perpetuating gender stereotypes and reinforcing clichés of heterosexual intimacy. Instead, the songs explore the struggle faced by both partners as they come to grips with the implications of intense emotional connection. In fact, we argue that each of the songs, and their accompanying videos, can be seen as powerful commentaries on love in late modernity—that is, at a time when conventions of gender and sexuality are in flux due to the rapidly changing nature of economic structures and social roles 1 of 20 (Rosin 2012 ). Through a multi-layered integration of lyrics, music, and images, these commentaries defy dominant ideologies of gendered subjectivities and sexual normativities in the context of romantic love. [1.2] The two videos share a number of common elements on the levels of form and content. With respect to form, both videos unfold in bleak and transient seHings, bot use color to express elevated states of feeling, and bot s o. t e vicissitudes of love to be intensely embodied experiences. Wit respect to content, bot videos represent t e male and female partners as engaged in a quest for sustainable relations ips, bot link sexual passion .it p ysical aggression, bot connect ecstasy and eup oria to conCict and destruction, and Inally, bot esc e. a narrative of male domination and female subordination in favour of one of equal partners ip—one in . ic men and .omen bear equal responsibility for a relations ip2s successes and failures as .ell as its pleasures and pains. Of course, .e are not suggesting t at po.er relations privileging men and marginaliEing .omen no longer exist. $ at .e are suggesting, o.ever, is t at stories of male privilege and female marginalization are not t e ones being told in t ese videos. T ey .ill, t erefore, not be our focus ere. Instead, our focus .ill be on making sense of o. complex relationalities are bound up in t e lived experience of eterosexual love as it is represented in t ese music videos by Pink and Ri anna. Context: Love Songs in Late Modernity [2.1] Popular musicologist Simon Frit declares emotions to be signiIcant for popular music sc olars ip. More speciIcally, e claims t at music is1Irst and foremost—“a .ay of managing t e relations ip bet.een our public and private emotional lives” 6 Frit 2004 , 39). Turning s ortly t ereafter to t e subGect of love songs, e explains: It is often noted but rarely discussed t at t e bulk of popular songs are love songs. T is is certainly true of t.entiet -century popular music in t e WestL but most non-Western popular musics also feature romantic, usually eterosexual love lyrics. T is is more t an an interesting statisticL it is a centrally important aspect of o. pop music is used. $ y are love songs so importantM ,ecause people need t em to give s ape and voice to emotions t at ot er.ise cannot be expressed .it out embarrassment or inco erence. Love songs are a .ay of giving emotional intensity to t e sorts of intimate t ings .e say to eac ot er 6and to ourselves7 in .ords t at are, in t emselves, quite Cat 6 39 7. [2.8A Despite Frit 2s claim t at love is an important part of . at propels popular music, representations of it ave received relatively scarce aHention in t e academic literature. Wit t e exception of Martin Stokes2s 6 2010 7 study of love as a form of cultural expression and ,. Lee Cooper2s 6 2015 7 study of romance recordings, t ere as been very liHle .ork done on o. love is represented in popular music, and even less on o. t ese representations are bound up .it issues of gender and sexuality. Our .ork seeks to Ill t is signiIcant gap in t e sc olars ip. 61) [2.9A To fully understand t e love songs of interest to us, it is important to situate t em in t e context of contemporary trends in popular music studies. In a recent article, Madaninka and ,art olome. 6 2014 7 examine top-40 c art data from 1971 to 2011 in order to track lyrical emp asis on lust 6i.e., sexual desire7 andOor love 6i.e., romance7. T e aut ors demonstrate a signiIcant s ift in t e topical focus of love songs, from a period of 3love” t emes in t e 70s to 90s to a period of “lust4 2 of 20 t emes in t e early postmillennium. 687 T ere can be no doubt t at 3-ry” and 3$e Found Love4 emerge at a moment . en lyrics relating to love are on t e decline and lyrics relating to lust are on t e rise. ,ot songs buck t is trend by exploring love relations ips .it out exploring sexual desire. And alt oug t e video images associated .it t e songs do suggest sexual activity, t is activity takes place in a context t at is clearly c aracterized by romance. [2.JA $ ile it may be productive to consider o. 3-ry” and 3$e Found Love” connect to t e t ematic trends identiIed by Madaninka and ,art olome., t e music analyst is in need of a more developed t eoretical toolkit in order to fully understand t e representations of gender, sexuality, and relationality t at c aracterize t e videos in question. We t us turn our aHention no. to t e t eoretical .ritings t at ave elped us to make sense of t ese representations. Theory: Love and The Cultural Politics of Emotion [3.1] $ en feminist media t eorists study music videos, t ey often focus on o. .omen are bot subGected to and t e subGects of po.er relations t at gro. out of . at bell ooks 6 ooks 1997 7 calls 3. ite supremacist capitalist patriarc y.” Concentrating on o. .omen are represented in a range of sexist, eterosexist, and racist .ays, feminist media t eorists tend to avail t emselves of t eoretical tools suc as t e male gaze 6 Mulvey 1975 , Kaplan 1987 , Sturken and Cart.rig t 2009 7L t e male imaginary 6 J ally 2007 7L and symbolic anni ilation 6 ClFment 1979 7. All of t ese tools allo. us to t ink critically about o. “regimes of representation” 6 AH.ood 2005 7 rely on gendered, sexualized, and racialized dynamics of domination and subordination. And . ile t ey are appropriate for making sense of macro-level p enomena relating to issues of po.er and discourse, t ey are some. at less appropriate for micro-level p enomena relating to issues of experience and feeling. In ot er .ords, t e feminist media-studies toolbox is unlikely to allo. us to fully understand t e representations of t e c allenges posed by intimacy and love in t e t.o selected videos, particularly since t ese representations do not appear to be mediated in any meaningful .ay by oppressive overarc ing norms and values. [3.8A Wit t eir emp asis on t e personal experience of love, t e songs .e ave c osen for analysis do not oBer muc in t e .ay of opportunities for t inking about gender and sexuality in macro terms. And since feminist analyses of popular music in particular and popular culture in general tend to focus on t e macro 6i.e., po.er and discourse7 more t an t e micro 6i.e., experience and feeling7, diBerent analytical tools are required to t ink about t e inner struggles t at pervade songs like 3-ry” and 3$e Found Love.” Once again, t is is not to say t at t e macro and t e micro are not al.ays already embedded in and entangled .it one anot er.