Dealing with violence and sexual assault in accounts of popular music's past (original) (raw)
Related papers
Continuum, 2018
For many years, the mistreatment of women in particular has essentially been normalized in many parts of the music industry. In recent years, however, there has been an increase in women coming forward and telling their stories, and asking that men be held accountable for wrongdoing. This interdisciplinary (sociology and philosophy) paper pursues two key feminist questions prompted by recent developments. Firstly: How has the construction of the history of popular music legitimated the continuation of this situation? 'Looking back' historically and sociologically, examples are provided of the legitimation or ignoring of violence against women (VAW) in the history of popular music to date. Secondly: How should we [archivists, historians, heritage curators and popular music educators], from now on, construct the history of popular music in a way that doesn't legitimate VAW? Turning to 'look forward', applied ethics frameworks are used to explore different aspects of this second question.
Give me myself again' : sexual violence narratives in popular music
2010
This thesis explores the relationships between popular music and experiences of sexual violence. It is situated at the intersection of trauma theory and cultural studies. Though a great deal of feminist work has been done on representations of sexual violence in the media, these reflections have either ignored music as a medium, or focused on it only in terms of misogynistic lyrics in rap and hip-hop. Similarly, contemporary trauma theory has addressed rape narratives in literature with regard to how these have interacted with lived experiences, but has not looked at these possibilities within music. There are two distinct ways in which this thesis approaches the topic: narrative analysis of the songs themselves, and survey work done with the audience of one particular iconic artist in this area, Tori Amos. The first chapter of analysis focuses on songs narrating experiences of domestic violence, and situates these within a wider feminist context of activism and social awareness. Th...
Fetishizing Music as Rape Culture
ABSTRACT The concept of “rapey music” has recently emerged as a social problem in feminist and mainstream contexts. Rapey music references songs that critics perceive as artifacts of “rape culture” because they allegedly perpetuate sexual violence, misogyny, and rape myths. This article draws on the con- cept of “fetishism” to analyze accusations that certain songs are rapey and argues that such songs can be recuperated through a kink lens. In the first part, I review the burgeoning category of songs that have been condemned in feminist media analyses and the weak evidence that connects certain songs to sexual coercion, arguing that the terms “rapey” and “rape culture” operate as negative fetish concepts. I then analyze the disproportionate and more vehement targeting of Black performers, contending that a racialized fetishization underlies this phenomenon. In the last part, I defend music branded as “rape culture” by suggesting that its pleasurable dynamic can be understood through a non-normative kinky fetish framework.
#metoo 2.0 to #meNOmore: Analysing Western Reporting About Sexual Violence in the Music Industry
Journalism Practice, 2019
In October 2017, #metoo 2.0 reinforces the gendered sexual violence in the creative sector [Marghitu, 2018. "It's Just art: Auteur Apologism in the Post-Weinstein era", Feminist Media Studies, 18(93): 491-494] Building on this movement, on 11 November that year, 2912 women "testified about the situation in the Swedish music industry", signing an open letter condemning sexual violence [Nyheter, 2017. "2192 Women in the Swedish Music Industry Behind Appeal Against Sexism." Dagens Nyheter, November 17. https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/2192-women-in-theswedish-music-industry-behind-appeal-against-sexism/\]. After the Swedish initiative, on 12 December 2017, the #meNOmore hashtag was established by 1000 women who signed an open letter to the Australian music industry speaking out against similar behaviour [Whyte, 2017a. "Artists Speak Out Against Sexual Harassment in the Music Industry." AM-ABC Radio, December 13. https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/sexual-harassment-inthe-music-industry/9253956\]. Using a content analysis framework, this study examines the media framing of 26 stories about #meNOmore by the Western press from 22 November 2017 (height of the Swedish campaign) to 21 December 2017 (a week after the hashtag surfaced in Australia). Research from journalism studies and musicology highlights that sexual violence is historically engrained in the media and music industries. However, findings from our study of the first month's coverage of the #meNOmore content analysis in 2017 reveal that media reports about women and sexual violence were framed around addressing gender inequality and systemic structural issues in the music industry. This raises the question, has the media has turned a corner when covering sexual violence in the post #metoo era?
“Alpha Females”: Feminist Transgressions in Industrial Music
Arts
Recycled, re-engineered and transformed pornography has often been appropriated by many of the industrial music movement’s female personalities who are invested in an anti-censorship discourse. This contrasts with the dominant form of feminism in the 1970s, which railed against the depiction of all aspects of sexuality. Artists Cosey Fanni Tutti, Lisa Carver, Diamanda Galás, Mïrka Lugosi, Antal Nemeth, Diana Rogerson and Jill Westwood challenged the codes of male domination by reconfiguring gender and overturning the violence perpetrated by men within the industrial movement. Following the artistic and cultural context of the 1970s and 1980s, such issues gave rise to the radical performances that are discussed throughout this article.
Shifting Identities of Feminism to Challenge the Classical Music Canon
"Shifting Identities of Feminism to Challenge Classical Music Canon" Practices: A Beginners Guide to Guerrilla Gender Musicology" In Under Construction Performing Critical Identity, MDPI books, Marie-Anne Kohl (Ed.), 2021
Gender studies in musicology, a development closely linked to the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s, have actively worked to challenge the near-invisibility of women within classical music historiography, education and repertoire. Though significant advances have been made, canon practices today—as represented by mainstream repertoire, publication and educational norms—remain largely static. This paper reflects briefly on the origins and state of canon practices in terms of their pervasive and problematic gender bias. It then discusses approaches employed by gender studies in musicology since their establishment in the 1980s and 1990s. It examines case studies involving gender interests with respect to persuasion and change—in terms of both feminist aims (ratification of the equal rights amendment and Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and canon concerns (classical music collections and poetry anthologies), juxtaposing more subtle and more overt approaches, and explores the issue of backlash. Findings from research in behavioral psychology are presented, particularly, studies on persuasion focused on relationships between exposure, liking and resistance in regard to new stimuli. Based on these findings, in combination with evidence from the case studies, an alternative approach for rehabilitating canon practices with regard to gender is proposed. This approach, referred to as Guerrilla Gender Musicology, suggests more subtle, subversive, bottom-up methodologies and may be required to enhance and reframe current efforts in order to effectively reshape embedded canon practices with regard to gender bias in the long term.
“A Broken Record: Subjecting 'Music' to Cultural Rights,”
2009
In this chapter, we assess the relationship between social health and cultural forms in the scope of appropriating ‘artistic consent.’ We do not argue that all forms of cultural appropriation is wrong. In contrast to ‘free culture’ pro-public domain movements, however, we argue that appropriating certain kinds of recorded music should be considered within political and historical contexts. In some situations, particularly involving the recorded music of indigenous communities often subjected to histories of colonialism and domination, appropriation of recorded music needs to be understood as a violation of cultural rights and its ‘repatriation’ must go beyond compensation to encompass a unique set of resources to enable distinct futures to be articulated.