This paper adopts qualitative research method, specifically; corpus analysis to review studies on the portrayal and objectification of women in music videos such in Naira Marley’s musical videos. The study was carried out from July 2018 to October 2018 and data sources included Web of Science Collection, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Google. These databases were selected because they have a lot of high impact journals and they are devoted to publishing peer-reviewed publications. From July to September 2018, an initial electronic search yielded about 200 articles. Furthermore, in October 2018 an additional 50 articles were retrieved. The retrieved articles were speed-read by checking the titles, abstracts and conclusions to ensure each retrieved work is entirely related to the subject matter. This process resulted in a total of (n=62) purposefully selected studies used in this current research. Results indicate that a large number of the reviewed studies used content analysis and objectification theory. Most of the studies reported that female artists are more sexually objectified, held to stricter appearance standards, and were more likely to demonstrate sexually alluring behaviour in music videos. Sexual objectification was found to be more prominent in Naira Marley’s musical videos than in other musicians’ videos. The study was conducted in Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka. The Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka is a Nigerian technical tertiary institution located in Akoka, a suburb of Yaba in Lagos. The study recommends that future investigators should make it a priority to extend to other regions so as to expand the understanding of music portrayal and objectification of women and audience perception.

TABLE OF CONTENT

TITLE PAGE

APPROVAL PAGE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT.

TABLE OF CONTENT

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CHAPTER ONE

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

• • BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

 

• • STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

 

• • AIM OF THE STUDY

 

• • SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

 

• • SCOPE OF THE STUDY

 

• • RESEARCH QUESTIONS

 

• • DEFINITION OF TERMS.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

2.0      REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

 

 

• • THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK

 

• • HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF NAIRA MARLEY

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

3.0      METHODOLOGY

 

 

• • INTRODUCTION

 

• • STUDY AREA

 

• • RESEARCH DESIGN

 

• • SAMPLE AND SAMPLING TECHNIQUES

 

• • DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

RESULT ANALYSIS

4.1.     RESULT ANALYSIS

4.2      DISCUSSION

CHPATER FIVE

CONCLUSION AND REFERENCES

 

• • CONCLUSION

 

• • RECOMMENDATION

 

• • REFERENCES

 

CHAPTER ONE

1.0                                                          INTRODUCTION

1.1                                             BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Research has shown that there is a significant rise and development of the musical videos due to its enormous appeal to express a variety of ideas, feelings, and emotions (Luddy, 2016; Omoniyi, 2008; Omojola, 2006; Ssewakiryanga, 1999), resulting to a seeming financial success and popularity of the musicians and hip-hop culture. However, there has been an increasing concern about the negative impact of music on the perception of women in the society as well as its misogynistic exploitation of women. Sexuality in music has become more intense and more frequent (Song, 2016), and women face a constant bombardment of images constituting who they should be, what they need to look like, and how they are expected to balance their lives (Luddy, 2016). Thus, the issue of women objectification and portrayal in the media has attracted a growing body of research and this sexual objectification has been described as an experience of being treated as a body (or collection of body parts) valued predominantly for its use to (or consumption by) others (Ward, Hansbrough, and Walker, 2005; Brown, Steele, and Walsh, 2002; Hubbell, 2002).

For instance, Dauphinais (2015) observes that in nearly any genre of music there are numerous music videos with barely clad women marching around with no function other than to offer eye candy or to please a man or to display their nakedness to men. This means that the entertainment media such as music videos, music, and television today objectify women in society with a firm focus on portraying women as sexual objects (Harper and Tiggemann, 2008). This view is supported by studies suggesting that popular music includes sexualized representation of women, with an unclear motives and consequences (Boosalis and Golombisky, 2010; Adams and Fuller, 2006; Chatterji, 2012; Espinosa, 2010; Frazier, 2013; Brathwaite, 2013; Glantz, 2013). Accordingly, Dunu and Ugbo (2015) have emphasised that the preponderance of hyper sexualised representations and negative images of women demonstrated in popular music, which are closely associated with the cultural views of masculinity, seem in recent times to have become dominant and magnified. Substantiating this notion, evidence has established that music; especially popular ones have a huge impact on the way gender is constructed in our culture. In this respect, Railton and Watson (2005) have noticed that if a song is played over a period of time, it attracts the attention of people and then becomes normal and acceptable, and whatever is being represented in that song becomes acceptable with time.

Prior studies that examined the stereotypical nature of women in music videos hypothesis that men are mostly depicted as powerful, and dominant, whereas women are victims of circumstances, objectified, and seen as weaker vessels (Macnamara, 2006; Gill, 2007; Kalof, 1999). Most musical videos portray a particular image that shows a man with a lot of money, that have control over half naked displayed girls. This is demonstrated in such a fashion that depicts owning and controlling such women, as if they could not think on their own (Dunu and Ugbo, 2015). Similar study has shown that music videos are becoming increasingly sexually explicit (Glantz, 2012), suggesting that music contains more substantially sexual content than any other media outlets (Pardun, L’Engle, and Brown, 2005). Investigators (e.g. Cummins, 2007; Wallis, 2010; Kalof, 1999) found that women in music videos are mostly used for sexy dance and also audience enjoy the sexual contents in music video because it gives them sexual arousal. Congruently, Bell, Lawton and Dittmar (2007) remark that models, especially ladies who dance in the music videos, show their body shapes, size of their body while doing the movement.

Accordingly, most music video clips now use erotic images of women to sell their videos and also in a way promoting a thin body image of women. Women’s images are turned into commercialization where the Directors of videos, sell more if they use women images in their text, not just any kind of women, but mostly thin images and half naked images which are used to attract an audience or readers. In the same vein, Wiederman (2000, p.258) reports that “women in western cultures are objectified to a greater degree than are men, in that women’s bodies are looked at, evaluated, and sexualized with greater frequency.” Intrinsically, prior study established that music and images in musical video clips can make viewers to construct the world they live in (Brown, Campbell, and Fischer, 1986). This supports studies that examine the effect of gender and stereotyped music imagery on the society which revealed that the exposure to the normal traditional sexual images have an effect in the sexual relationships of individuals (Turner, 2011; Kalof, 1999). Hassan and Abubakar (2017) note that the society as a whole is now a simple hostage at the hands of the media. As such, the music and movie industry are said to play a key role in influencing people’s perception (Happer and Philo, 2013; Garfias, 2004; Horton, Price, and Brown, 1999). This implies that music videos are an influential form of mass media (Roberts, Henrikson, and Foehr, 2004). In line with this, Nwagbara (2005) observs that women are portrayed and given images of alluring sex objects, incompetent career women, or the fashion beauty crazy freaks. Thus, the recurring sexual messages in musical video sends a sticking impression over time contributing to the change in individual’s immediate state by inducing arousal, leading to inhibition of impulses, or activating thoughts.

The objectification of women in the society through the entertainment media, specifically music videos has attracted an array of studies, conducted using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Despite this considerable number of studies, a review of literature on the portrayal of women in music videos is scarce. There was an earlier effort by Khan (2008), which focused on reviewing the literature that centres on music video portrayal of women in American popular culture, and it was recommended that further efforts be undertaken to review studies that focused on the portrayal and objection of women in music videos in general. Furthermore, scholars have also suggested that when the findings of studies contradict one another, a follow-up is necessary to synthesis and organise, the extent a growing body of literatures have addressed a related subject matter (Hanafizadeh, Behboudi, Koshksaray, and Tabar, 2014; Shaikh and Karjaluoto, 2015), as well as suggest directions for further research. It has also been stated that for about three decades, researchers have contributed to the literature focusing on the music video portrayal of gender performance, and this calls for addressing the findings of these literatures as well as considering the limitations and proposing directions for future research (Frazier, 2013). Supporting this view, evidence proposes that as sexuality in music video becomes more intense and more frequent, it requires more attention by scholars (Luddy, 2016; Andsager and Roe, 2003).

Drawing from this pool of suggestions, a review of literature that concerns the portrayal of women in music videos is worthwhile because it represents an important milestone in the development of a research field. It also provides opportunity to manifest the collective intelligence that has been compiled from the eclectic body of research that uses several samples, participants and methods. Thus, the result of this work, is beneficial for future researchers in this field of inquiry because it attempts to increase the understanding of women’s portrayal in the media most especially music videos as well as contribute to the gender and feminine literature through exploring and analyzing the current state of knowledge.

1.2                                    PROBLEM STATEMENT

Youth music culture is relatively a new phenomenon in Nigeria, but the rise of hip hop/rap threatens the survival of other genres of popular music targeted at youth audience, such as rhythm and blues (R&B), reggae, afro-beat and yo-pop. Innocuous as youth music may seem to adult Nigerians, it may contain elements with potential to provoke or aggravate negative perception to audience. To determine what this newly discovered culture could reveal negative perception from the audence in the system, and particularly among youth, a group of audience were asked to assess popular music with bias to violence. The premise is that music could reveal the mindset of its composers and consumers. In a descriptive study, essays written by undergraduate students were analyzed to ascertain whether Naira Marley music contains women sexual explicit video presentation; and whether violent music elicits aggression from the consumers. This study of music violence reveals that artiste ( Naira Marley), by being accepted by their youth audience, do influence their consumers’s behaviours through their music negatively in that some of these music contains women sexual explicit.

1.3                                        AIM OF THE STUDY

This paper is aimed at extending understanding of the portrayal and objectification of women in music videos as it continues to be a bone of contention among scholars.

1.4                                                     SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study examined the stereotypical portrayals of women and how misogynistic messages about women are often present but not always acknowledged in popular culture. Looking at the case study of Naira Marley’s musical videos, lifestyle, and his enduring legacy, it is apparent that he stands as an exemplar of the sort of moral blindness with which many famous cultural producers are met by their audiences. Using a combination of primary sources including Marleys recorded music, album art, interviews, performance recordings, and music lyrics, it became evident that messages of misogyny like the sexual objectification of women, prejudice against women, encouraging harassment against women, projecting women as inferior and cheap to men.

1.5                                               SIGNIFICACE OF THE STUDY

This study is important in bringing awareness to the stereotypical portrayals of women still evident in today’s society. In addition, this study will add relevant literature to the communication discipline and allow scholars to critically engage with the norms governing society through popular culture. It is relevant to the communication discipline in the sense that this study will add to our understanding of how popular culture reflects and informs our perceptions of and assumptions about gender. Popular culture creates, reflects, and reinforces norms which are influential in determining how individuals conduct themselves in society. Through popular culture, expectations are defined regarding how we understand others based upon identity characteristics such as race, class, sexuality, and, most important to this study, gender. Gaining insight into how gender is portrayed in global popular culture will provide an opportunity to confront biases and inequalities that gender roles may perpetuate.

As a native of African descent, who takes great pride in being an independent woman, I am deeply aware of the deterrents created just from being labelled a woman in contemporary society. Hence, my interest in this study is that it stands to help us better ascertain how Marley’s, one of my native country’s most notable cultural exports, has been and continues to be complicit in perpetuating misogyny and resulting gender bias.

1.7                                                     RESEARCH QUESTION

At the end of this work, this work shall be able to bring answers to the following question:

 

1. 1. How Naira Marley’s musical videos do affect audience perception?

 

1. 1. What are the perceptions of audiences that watch the video?

 

 

 

• • Should audience stop watching Naira Marley’s musical videos

 

1.8                                                    DEFINITION OF TERMS

Audience: the assembled spectators or listeners at a public event such as a play, film, concert, or meeting.

Portrayal: is a depiction of someone or something in a work of art or literature; a picture.

Perception: the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted