Our popular culture offers us endless images & messages about intimacy, romance, and sex. These themes were present in numerous songs throughout history. How do you think that these images & messages have changed over time? And, how do you think these popular images & messages affect our own perceptions and pursuit of these things?
Today, many music videos tell a story about masculinity that equates manhood with power & domination. And often this story complements the story of femininity as passive and women as submissive. Men's violence against women is eroticized in many music videos. For example, in the video "Eat You Alive" by Limp Bizkit, Fred Durst, the group's lead singer ties a woman to a chair and sprays her with a hose while screaming violent threats & insults in her face! Images like this, found in music videos, normalize & glamorize sexual violence. We must ask what consequences they have for relationships between real men & women who grow up with these images. We can also look at song lyrics and the messages that they might convey.
*For this assignment you should find a current song relating to anything about Human Sexuality and take a look at the lyrics. Use something current with in the last 5 yrs. (Or, definitely keep it in the last 10 yrs.) Then, go back in time and find a song with a similar theme from a different era so you can make a comparison to the lyrics of both songs. This 2nd song must be from 1980 or older, 1970s, 1960s 1950s etc.
*After listening to both songs & looking at their lyrics you will do a brief write up discussing the differences, similarities and the message being conveyed in these songs. You can talk about some of the following questions. How do the lyrics reflect the era of the songs you chose? Do the lyrics reflect a specific perception about women or men? You may include a discussion about the images of the music video for the current song. How are we affected by these lyrics & images?