...as a note ....and not forgetting to mention how women are portrayed generally in music-clips propagated by stations like MTV !...
In an overly-suffocating -politically correct-world such as ours today....I'm absolutely astonished about how they always manage to get away with it !......I think that those so called 'entertaiment' clips, are in my humble opinion, the biggest 'culprits' to portray women as dumb and worthless objects of disposable desires and as pieces of throw-away 'property' ...and yet I hardly see anyone in the 'intellectually' critical art community or the so called 'expertises' in the field...denouncing it......at least !!....and then it comes to my mind that expression ... 'selling your soul to the devil'....
Arts and Culture
From Shakespeare to The Smiths, Wittgenstein to WarholIn the U.S., a gaudy aesthetic seems to have taken hold in upper middle class television shows, reality shows and game shows. Its evident in commercials for cell phones. Women are portrayed as utterly confused and shamelessly dumb.
It seems like this aesthetic is having a grand effect on people. I feel like the common woman, walking down the street with a shopping bag, is increasingly superficial and self-concerned. When did pop culture become so distasteful?
...PS....
....and then when such phenomenon takes control on society .....I ask myself very often.....Is Art Dead ?...buy hey...I do not mean 'Dead' ...it is just a metaphor for...... 'inertia '...oh well maybe it is to complicated after all.......:):):)
Youtube is bringing reality tv to a new height. With Cellphones and downloading and uploading, everyone can produce their own show. TV viewers have dropped by half of what it used to be a decade ago in the US. The habbit of watching television is changing, and people now go to watch stuff online, there are cult followings on certain obscure online motion picture productions. In China, some independent movie makers don't even bother to show their work on the big screen since they can never pass the local rating system so they directly shoot digital and show on vcd or dvd and ship overseas and it's just another new condition with all these new independently produced, low budget digital movies showing up online everywhere. We have entered a new frontier in entertainment and viewing of entertainment.
As for the esthetic, I think it's a style and fad only.
I don't want people to start denoucing the so call tasteless portrial of women because we get to the territory of freedom of expression. So if you don't like it, just don't watch it.
But television has become more than just entertainment. It is a pop culture guide for young people. The way they are portrayed, that is the way they seem to act. Or perhaps it really is the other way around, and I am mistaken.
I just watched a film last night (Idiocracy) that takes place 500 years in the future where TV has been continually dumbed-down to the point where the most popular show is something called 'Ow, My Balls!' and Fox News/porn combo infotainment.
It's supposed to be a comedy but it does seem that that's what chasing the lowest-common-denominator will inevitably lead to.
I think the YouTube model will prevent that, hopefully.
I find that I watch TV much less now, and when I go to youtube, I look for specific stuff, like Charlie Rose's Interviews, some fashion stuff, or something specific, I can't find these things on TV and I find most TV shows are boring unless I don't want to think at all then maybe I will flip the channels on TV and see what comes up.