What a Video Queen is to a Male Artist: the Social-Semiotic Analysis of Music Videos and Lyrics in Tanzania (original) (raw)

This paper is set to examine the representation of women by male artists in bongo flava. It aims at disclosing the discursive practices taking place between men and women in the music industry. The study used Teo van Leeuwen's social semiotics to analyze the data through exclusion, role, specific and general, and categorization. The linguistic analysis showed that a woman is subservient to man; she is permissive with her body, allowing the camera to focus on her boobs and buttocks. The dancing styles and flaunting are to attract the viewing audience. In the lyrics she is a harlot, slut, lunatic, killer, involved in commercial sex, unsettling in relationships and all she sees is money. Interviews with male artists show her as a means to the male artists' end, she is ready to do anything for money because she is a prostitute. Focused group participants, being unsophisticated viewers, do not take this woman to be a special kind of woman; she represents other women rather than the ones she is categorized with. She is a product of the habitus whose socio-cultural and economic situation needs to be interrogated.

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