Educational Media Reviews Online

There exists widespread cultural sensitivity to fairness and tolerance, any many significantly-noted eruptions of bigotry or misogyny seem to be met with the disclaimer that the issue might somehow open a “cultural debate.” Arguably, though, the debate never really occurs, and few serious outlets have investigated the cultural and pop-cultural causes and relationships of these issues and overall social consciousness. Of these few serious studies that offer useful, logical information while providing a forum for debate is Sut Jhally’s Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video. A follow-up to Dreamworlds and Dreamworlds 2 (1991 and 1995, respectively), Dreamworlds 3 continues the investigation of the social constructs of music videos and how they draw from, reinforce, and shape cultural ideas and ideals about masculinity, femininity, and individualism.

Jhally opens his film with the observation that the hyper-masculine world view (the “Dreamworld,” the director names it) has been endemic in advertising for years. The creation of “fantasy female characters” runs the commercial engine of everyday products, but is heightened and extremized in the music video. Significantly, Jhally points out that even seemingly now “tame” videos from almost the onset of the music video in the early 1980s employed hypersexual images, promoting women’s bodies as a type of currency. This transference of human beings into a currency and as things to be used, bought, and sold is made obvious with the images the director uses to accompany his narration. Truly, images taken out of the context of their videos and presented with a thoughtful and intelligent critique makes them especially shocking, objectivizing, and banal.

Jhally makes somewhat sweeping statements, but always proves their truth with excellent selections from the videos themselves. That is, much in the critical field might speak of the objectification of women, but the author shows—in sometimes both ridiculously-out-of-context and rather filthy video clips—how exactly this is true. In the same manner, the statement that videos are predicated upon and promote the “adolescent male fantasy” would seem dogmatic in less skilled hands, yet the author makes a compelling case as to why, exactly, this is so. Narration over selected images in Dreamworlds 3 never seems forced, and always at least provides extremely evocative food for thought. This film will both raise questions and prove compelling to audiences.

To prove his points, Jhally deconstructs images, themes, and tropes in popular music videos. The director may make some seemingly blanket-type statements, but he always provides ample evidence to support his theories. For example, saying that videos are conventionally constructed so that numerous fetishized women crave a sole man might seem as if it is a terribly over-reaching statement, but the director matches his theory to so many images that support this claim that the idea becomes clear and believable. Many of the claims of misogyny, objectification, and “lowest common denominator” that are often promoted culturally in this troubling debate are proven in Jhally’s work. Indeed and importantly, the director shows that the glamorization and normalization of degradation is not limited to what we might limit to “gansta rap,” but is endemic across the music video genre.

The director further opens the appeal of this film by investigating the filmic techniques of contemporary music videos. It is somewhat surprising for a film of this nature to deconstruct even the manner in which videos are typically filmed, explaining that certain oft-used shots and camera angles add to and reinforce the concept of woman as object. All of this critique is done intelligently -- which is to say that, while “academic,” the director/narrator is never dogmatic or even moralistic, that he speaks at an accessible level, and that he, again, backs up his research with evocative images.

If Jhally cannot necessarily prove his ideas on the interplay between the overall desires of our culture, the commercialization of videos, and the drawing from and forming ideas in society, he can certainly provide enough narrative and visual information to open an extremely important dialog regarding the give/take nature of music videos. Are they solely shaping culture? Are they merely giving back to us what we want to see? Or is it something in between? Dreamworlds 3 provides some answers, but will certainly provide a basis for a dialog on these issues that we might be arguably culturally and conventionally lacking.

This is not to say that the film is entirely without faults. The counter-argument to debates regarding race, misogyny, and generally conceived notions for and against the idea of contemporary music videos is often that sweeping statements are made without proof. While this is, again, rare in Jhally’s work, once or twice statements are made that cannot be entirely proven within the film. For example, Jhally notes that “largely” white men control the corporate media and direction of the music video machine. This statement evokes a common though somewhat confusing argument regarding the media. What to make of African-American owned and run production studios, for example? Too, it is not immediately clear why this fact necessarily leads to objectification of women. Similarly, the director notes many female artists like Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Jewel, and Janet Jackson embarked on a “journey to objectification” and followed the “sexual imperative” after having had more demure careers and self-promotion. It is unclear why they “had” to recreate their images into much more conventional (that is, female-as-objects) fetishized images. Is it simply for commercial purposes or is there a deeper meaning here?

(Notably, even in the very, very few “troubling” sections of the film, Jhally manages to offer fascinating questions. For example, in Jackson’s now-infamous 2004 Superbowl appearance -- which provided our culture with the concept of a “wardrobe malfunction” -- where, notes the director, was the censure against Justin Timberlake, who actually tore Jackson’s clothing off? This criticism, he proves, is not proffered because Timberlake was filling a now-accepted role as man-as-aggressor/woman-as-object….)

Dreamworlds 3, as can be imagined, contains perhaps offensive language, violence, and sexual imagery. Thus, it is inappropriate for younger or sensitive audiences.

In short, though, any real criticism of the film is something like nit-picking. Dreamworlds 3 is an important and useful work. For its study of the interplay between the larger culture and music videos, it is highly recommended for collections that focus on pop-culture; for its investigation on the objectification of people, it is essential for women’s or gender studies; for the deconstruction of narrative and film techniques, it is important in film and media studies; and for anyone at all invested in the debate regarding the media’s influence on culture, it is highly recommended overall.