Women in Country Music Videos

Abstract

JANELLE WILSON [*] music videos offer space for contemporary female artists to more visually and openly challenge that which their predecessors challenged in their time -- the traditional, confining gender roles that dominant American culture COUNTRY MUSIC VIDEOS, as an adjunct to songs, constitute powerful means of portraying values, images, and ideas to listeners/viewers. I suggest that country music videos offer space for contemporary female artists to more visually and openly challenge that which their predecessors challenged in their time -- the traditional, confining gender roles that dominant American culture espouses. Bufwack and Oermann (1993) comment on the influence of video on women in country music: Video saturation has revealed their overall intelligence. Today's performers are bright, aware, take-charge ladies with enormous reserves of wit and wisdom (p.483). Drawing contrast with rock music -- and, in particular, rock music video -- Bird (1997) notes that do we see in country the kind of degrading of women's sexuality that we see in rock. Indeed, the violence, explicit sexuality, and exploitation that tend to be associated with rock music videos are not readily apparent in country music videos. Thus, while the form -- i.e., music video -- is borrowed from MTV, the content is not. Fenster (1993) suggests that country music videos be seen as response -- i.e., a response to the mainstream music industry's success with rock videos as source of promotion (p.109). Content Analysis I conducted content analysis of sample of the most popular country music videos, as presented on the cable station, Country Music Television. [1] Begun in 1983, features 24-hour country music video programming format. Rather than continuously running country music videos, has number of specific programs. The one most crucial for this study is the CMT Top 12 Countdown, weekly 90-minute countdown of the top 12 music videos of the week. My sample of 26 videos consists of the #1 videos shown from January 20 through July 20 (1996). Four basic pieces of information were gleaned from each video: the theme of the song/video, the sex of the artist, the sex of the protagonist(s), and, if relevant, the way in which the particular video portrays women (or, more generally, gender relations). Though there was no formal means of obtaining inter-coder reliability, colleague (with whom I have worked in the past on music video), examined the lyrics, and he and I reached consensus on the types of themes predominant in the songs. Sixteen of the videos in my sample featured male artists, while 10 featured female artists. In the majority of the videos (20), the protagonists are heterosexual couple. The songs and videos are very much about you and me, and thus are quite subjective and narrow in focus. Three of the videos feature the female as the protagonist. All three of these are videos by Shania Twain. Two of these at least imply an us -- but it isn't given that the man has won her love in two of the songs. In one video, the man is protagonist; in another generic family is protagonist, and finally, one video has father and daughter as the protagonists. What can be made of these basic quantified results? There is rarely any recognition of factors or forces outside of the couple being sung about. There is no reference to the role and influence of social environments on individual behavior and attitudes. No comments are made on work or the state of society. All that matters is you and me. Indeed, from deconstructionist viewpoint, it is significant to consider what is not present in these videos -- namely, any real allusion to work or the economy. As Ellison (1995) notes, hard times in country music are presented as an intimately personal condition -- one that can best be confronted romantically or spiritually [as opposed to collective political action] (p. …