Confrontations: Popular Music and Politics.

For my last blog entry of the semester I am going to be talking about chapter three in Entertaining the Citizen which is Popular Music and Politics. I should be an expert on this chapter because I did my media presentation on it. The first thing I am going to be talking about is Popular music as a Campaign Instrument.













MTV which stands for Music television has had numerous campaigns to try and get the youth or younger members of the voting community to try and get involved in politics and to get them to vote and have their voices heard. Rock the vote and Choose or lose are the two major events that MTV endorsed and uses to get their viewers educated about politics. Politicians like former president George Busch senior have tried to use MTV as a way to get people to vote in favor of themselves. Although this plan backfired for Mr. Busch going on MTV or being involved in their campaigns usually help them in their efforts to get to the white house. Although these campaigns claim to have increased voters registration in the younger crowd but the main question still remains. That question being do these campaigns really bring these young voters to the voting booths? The have factual evidence that says they have indeed increased registration but I don't believe that they really bring these voters to the voting booths. These campaigns are a good Idea And have good intent but politics are more than just popularity.

The second thing I am going to talking about from this chapter will be popular music as a political forum. Basically talking about musicians and bands using their fame or concerts as a way to spread their political ideas.

These two photos that you see are from Rage Against The machines Republican National Convention protest concert held in Minneapolis last September. As you can see RATM loves to share their political ideas through their music and concerts. You can see them dressed in prison suits with black masks over their heads representing inmates in the prison camps that the US has. The other photo I think speaks for itself with the nice little saying above the concert stage that shows their love for the RNC. I think that musicians using their stage for talking about politics is fine by me. I think it might be a good things to maybe help get people more aware about certain issues and things of that nature. You can to see a concert but you learned a little bit about government issues, all good in my book. Some people say popular musicians should just sing and not talk about politics but, if they are actually really passionate about their beliefs then they should have the same right to free speech as we do. I wouldnt adivise that popular music should be your sole source of political knowledge but, it is a alternative source and in some cases a pretty good one.


Sometimes when Musicians speak their minds about their political views and how they feel about the country can get them into trouble and cause a major backlash. I know in class and in my media presentation we talked about the dixie chicks deal. When the lead singer claimed that she was ashamed that the president was from her home state of Texas. Then this caused a huge debacle and everyone hated the dixie chicks and called them un American and things of that nature. Using popular music as a Political forum can be a good way to get ideas and information out to the public but it isnt always the best way to go about it.

Gender in American Film Since the 1960's

In this issue of my blog I will be chatting about the topic of gender in American film. The first concept that I will be talking about will be Gender in the "slasher" genre of films. The Slasher type of movie became popular during the 1970's and the 1980's, for awhile you didn't see a lot of slasher movies after the mid 1980's then they made a revival during the mid 1990's. In class we used the movie Scream I believe for the class example. In that example we saw the one survivor was the one girl that was not sexually active and she was dressed in clothes that were not very reveal ling unlike the other cast members. I am going to be talking about gendered violence in the next paragraph comparing how men are killed in these films compared to women.

Gendered Violence

In these films you will see that male characters are usually killed right away or quickly and they don't drag out the killing its usually just quick then done. With women you see them get chased around for quite a while and then when the killer finally catches them you will see them being killed and attacked for a while and they seem to be tortured and killed very slowly the very opposite of the male characters. A film that has some examples of this gendered violence and is considered a horror film not exactly a slasher film but still has some of the same characteristics would be "Cabin Fever". This film was created by Eli Roth in 2002 and draws from other horror films from the slasher movie golden age of the 1980's.

In this film features five recent college graduates who rent a cabin for the weekend in the woods in a remote town. There are three guys and two girls involved in this film. You get to see some examples of gendered violence play out in this movie. There is a flesh eating virus that is contaminating the water source that feeds the cabins water supply. One of the girls comes down with the flesh eating virus and when she is sleeping with one of the male characters he notices that she is bleeding and there is a large wound on her leg. The group starts to freak out and instead of trying to help the girl out they banish her to a small tool shed so that the other four friends don't get infected by her. They leave her out in this tool shed and let this virus slowly eat her away. I think this is an excellent example of gendered violence on females in slasher films. She is just left to suffer and die slowly where as you see with other males in this film there are killed quickly and don't suffer like this girl did. The other female in the film suffers a very similar fate. Once she realizes that she is infected the virus slowly eats away at her and you just watch her suffer until she finally is killed by the virus. Another concept I am going to talk about with Slasher films is The "Final Girl" and the virgin whore complex as well as the films punishing sexually active women.

"Final Girl" and Punishing sexually active women

As I mentioned earlier in this blog entry about the movie scream and the final girl usually being a non sexually active girl compared to others that died and the films punishing the girls that were sexually active by having them tortured and killed slowly. A film that I believe that has good examples of these to concepts would be Rob Zombies remake of Halloween (2007). This movie is a remake and it is a prequel to the original film. In this film there are lots of examples of punishing of the sexual active women and a very good final girl example.

In this film we see Mr. Meyers as a young child and he goes on a brutal killing spree at his home. We see his older sister and her boyfriend having sexual relations and after they are done Michael comes in and brutal kills his sister with a large knife. She was tortured and it was a very drawn out gruesome scene to say the least. I believe this is a very good example of the girls who are sexually active being punished. When Michael comes back after fifteen years to his hometown to find his sister, ends up killing one of her friends in his old home after she was fooling around with her boyfriend. This would be another example of punishing the sexually active girls. The Final girl example would be that of Michael's sister who he comes back for after fifteen years. She is seen as pure and doesn't do any sexual things and she survives the movie after Meyers was after her. This movie had very good examples of both of these concepts I mentioned. That's all I for this entry, until my next entry peace.