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Risque videos
TheTruth1983
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The controversy that The Answer have stirred up in NI over the video to their latest song, Spectacular, has got me thinking about risque and controversial videos and the reactions of the public to them.
For decades, people have always reacted with moral outrage when artists push the limits of 'acceptable' in their music videos. I guess it begs the questions "have the artists gone too far?" and "Are we boringly conservative in this country?".
For me, if an artist is not pushing the boundaries of what is socially acceptable, they are not doing enough with their art.
As for The Answer's video, it features the kind of scenes that I have seen in some house parties I have attended. Perhaps that is what the objections are about :rolleyes:
Anyway judge the video for yourself but be warned it is NSFW.
http://www.muzu.tv/theanswer-napalmrecords/spectacular-music-video/1965670/
For decades, people have always reacted with moral outrage when artists push the limits of 'acceptable' in their music videos. I guess it begs the questions "have the artists gone too far?" and "Are we boringly conservative in this country?".
For me, if an artist is not pushing the boundaries of what is socially acceptable, they are not doing enough with their art.
As for The Answer's video, it features the kind of scenes that I have seen in some house parties I have attended. Perhaps that is what the objections are about :rolleyes:
Anyway judge the video for yourself but be warned it is NSFW.
http://www.muzu.tv/theanswer-napalmrecords/spectacular-music-video/1965670/
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Belouis Some - Imagination NSFW
Duran Duran - Girls On Film NSFW
And Madonna's Like a Prayer upset a lot of religious people.
One of the most controversial videos that beats all these, must still be this one:
Serge Gainsbourg - Lemon Incest Creeps the hell out of me :eek:
Story about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_Incest
I'm not even going to bother clicking the link
The music video these days is an intrinsic part of the art, though. A music video well done can make a bad song huge (Gangnam Style?) or done badly can make a good song die in obscurity. We may not like that fact but it is true.
The Answer are operating from Northern Ireland which is considerably more prudish than the rest of the UK when it comes to sexual relations. And that might partly explain the reaction to the video.
This wider point about about an artist pushing the boundaries of acceptability is a double edged sword. You could argue that Robin Thicke has pushed the boundaries with both the 'Blurred Lines' song and video and yet look at the reaction he has got. Thicke has been interpreted as being sexist and regressive which he probably is. But in this case that may be pushing against the new norm, the new boundaries which suggest that women shouldn't be objectified in that way. In other words, the boundaries may not be pushed in the direction you would like them to be!
I don't know much of The Answer's work but the song on the video is very weak. And the video does little for it. The singer looks like he's from a different band!
Quite possibly
Is Thike that guy who was bumming Miley on stage the other day? Can't say I'm familiar with his oevre.
I'm just not in favour of cynically sexing up videos in order to get Youtube hits. Now that the US charts count hits in their charts, it's only going to get worse.
Just write good songs ffs!
It is in pushing the boundaries of what is socially acceptable that we often see the greatest innovation in art.
You're not seriously equating a cynical attempt to get Youtube views, with Michaelangelo....are you? :eek:
And I actually was a punk in the 70s, so that argument doesn't wash either.
And if it was a cynical attempt to get Youtube views, it didn't work very well as Youtube censored it :rolleyes:
whats literature got to do with it?
i think the boundaries have been pushed as far as they can go, i mean, we are talking about music videos not social revolution. im against music vids being nothing more then soft porn, its inappropriate when they are being viewed by kids.
It's all art and culture.
We should never be done pushing boundaries with the arts, when we do it becomes stale and predictable. Perhaps that is another reason the charts are so rubbish, people do what is safe. Boring.
If you are against music vids having sexual content, you may as well apply the same to movies and TV shows because they might be viewed by kids. That is just ludicrous. If you don't want your kids to see certain things, don't let them. Don't moralise with people who do want to see it.
That's what the watershed & film certificates are for.
Look, if you just want to talk about porn, go to GD or something. This is a music forum
I'm not the one who brought up the 'soft porn' comment, I was just responding. The fact is, I don't see a problem when musicians have adult content in either their songs or their music videos. Never have, never will. It is not up to musicians to moderate their art especially when kids are not their target audience.
ACDC were banned in certain countries, not because of their videos, but because of a mistaken belief that they were promoting the occult. Now they are regarded as in important hard rock band and have influenced so many bands.
Which goes to my point that even if art that is not well received initially that does not mean it is not culturally significant.
The trouble with boundaries is that they can only be pushed so far.
When you have had songs about cumming (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), masturbation (Turning Japanese and various others), countless videos of naked or semi-naked people cavorting and a plethora of rap records with the word f*** in them, where else is there to go? Paedophilia?
Careful....he's already named Lolita as a classic novel.
It is, it's a fantastic novel that everyone should read at some point in their lives.
The merits of punk were of course somewhat debatable.
It did push boundaries in terms of taste and decency (S&M imagery, The Sex Pistols swearing on TV) and that in itself was a dubious innovation but musically it was actually returning to a simpler, in many ways less adventurous kind of music than what had preceded it. It was returning to three chord songs, and there's only so much you can do with them.
I have read plenty of arguments that punk has had at least as much a negative impact on music and culture as a positive one. David Hepworth wrote a very good article on that a few years ago.
Read Simon Reynolds or Jon Savage to get a better idea of the importance of punk musically and culturally. The positives far outweigh the negatives.
As for risqué videos, I think Larry Clark's movie 'Kids' has a lot to answer for in relation to this teenage sex videos. I was actually quite surprised that something as blatantly sexist as 'Blurred Lines' received flack at all as I thought the feminist tendency was dead.
As for Lolita, yes a good novel pushed a few boundaries. It also catches that modern tendency of adults to want to want to live or recapture lost youth. Catcher in the Rye is much better though.
i absolutely agree with pushing the boundaries culturally, but advocating soft porn music vids? whats the point? is that really what we want? shouldnt the vid be complimentary to the content of the track? should women (invaribly) be portrayed as sex objects? what messages is all this sending out to kids? no wonder theres a high % of teenage (underage) pregnancies/std's, etc etc.. on one hand we are preaching one thing, on the other they are being encouraged to grow up too quickly and are being exposed to material beyond their years.
but i dont even think the majority of sex in vids adds anything to the music, its just a cheap gimmick to try to get more sales.
...and how many musicians are the ones employing sex in vids? id suggest that the vast majority of 'risque' vids are for piss poor dance tracks, and add nothing to the music.
yeah some people do try to make a name for themselves by challenging accepted norms... but in reality they are simply wrong. id agree wholeheartedly that punks impact was far more positive then negetive, in fact im struggling to think of a negetive.