Recent spate of overly racy music videos

[rogerzilla]

When Miley Cyrus gets naked and licks a hammer she's called "hot" and "sexy".

When I do it I'm called "drunk" and banned from B&Q.

[mattc]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-xrated-factor-lily-allen-sticks-it-to-the-misogynistic-music-man-8935706.html

...
"Um… I had two babies," the 28-year-old says at the start of the video to "Hard Out Here", while a suited male executive – her manager, perhaps, or a record company minder – looms over her, instructing the surgeon to "take some more out".

What follows is a pretty wicked parody of the modern pop video. At the encouragement of her "manager", Allen is urged to dance provocatively, throw money around and fellate a banana (her manager helpfully shows her how to do it) while bikini-clad dancers gyrate around her.
...

OT somewhat; surreal comments section comment of the day:
Id love to bang her with a zebra made form old bus tickets while wearing a toaster on my head and weetabix sticking out my bottom.

[Cudzoziemiec]

"If you can't detect the sarcasm you've misunderstood" I think the sarcasm goes two ways in that video, she's going to attract a lot of viewers with those wiggling bums who'll pay no attention to her message if they do notice it, and she must know that. I suppose just as a parody of sufficiently extreme views is indistinguishable from those views, so is a sarcastic take on extreme entertainment.

[LEE]

OT somewhat; surreal comments section comment of the day:
Id love to bang her with a zebra made form old bus tickets while wearing a toaster on my head and weetabix sticking out my bottom.

That's crazy, Weetabix is far too brittle, a Mars Bar, now that makes more practical sense.

[TimC]

"If you can't detect the sarcasm you've misunderstood" I think the sarcasm goes two ways in that video, she's going to attract a lot of viewers with those wiggling bums who'll pay no attention to her message if they do notice it, and she must know that. I suppose just as a parody of sufficiently extreme views is indistinguishable from those views, so is a sarcastic take on extreme entertainment.

I was surprised at that too; the satire was lost because the vid was too good a parody of those it was satirising. It might qualify as a 'wry commentary', but it's hardly hard-hitting.

I guess the girl's gotta make money from the system while she's dissing it.

[Kathy]

Did anyone else think that the "media executive" looked like Julian Assange, and wonder if that was deliberate?

[mattc]

Using soft-porn to sell stuff (be it music, or cars or a film) is a tricky thing to parody. If you do it by having sexy models/actresses wearing even less than usual, and/or behaving even more like porn stars ...
well, surely the flaw in this is obvious!

The obvious examples of male artists claiming to be doing parody:
- Robin Thick-Bastard's recent nonsense, and
- Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love*
There are others I can't recall right now.

Not sure what would work - you could have hideous women twerking, but that seems ... well, wrong in many ways. Perhaps geezers in drag? Or cartoons?!?



_{*which is actually a fantastic record! But that's not the point here ...}

[Cudzoziemiec]

I wonder if the best way might be to ignore it, make your own music which sells on its artistic qualities - and we know that Lily Allen can do that - and if you want to make a point, speak about it in interviews, tweets, and so on.

As TimC says, shes' got to make money from the system while dissing it - but dissing the system is part of the system! We don't really have (I think) a "counter culture" nowadays, everything's more or less mainstream. Well, Allen is certainly mainstream. But at least she's trying.

[rogerzilla]

I've just seen the unrated vid for Blurred Lines.  Gosh!

[pcolbeck]

I've seen it too. Can't believe they thought that was a good idea. However the dark haired girl has a figure that is a wonder of nature.

[rogerzilla]

I wouldn't kick any of them out of bed on a rainy night 

[pcolbeck]

A dim memory has just popped up of Motley Crue doing a video for "Girls Girls Girls" that had two versions. It was set in a strip club and in one version it was quite tame and in the other the girls were naked. The biker bar I used to hang out in in the 80s had the uncensored version on the video jukebox, MTV etc played the other one. I wonder if that's where Mr Thickie got the idea from ?

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

See also the video for Bicycle Race.

[citoyen]

The obvious examples of male artists claiming to be doing parody:
- Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love*

What he does very well, and what Lily Allen doesn't quite succeed in doing, is tread the knife-edge between sincerity and irony.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've just discovered a singer/performer called Maria Peszek, and I think this vid is quite a good take on the "racy" genre.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/87L41sN0oso&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/87L41sN0oso&rel=1</a>

If you like the film Amelie, you might enjoy the previous track on that list as well.

[rogerzilla]

Miley appears to be rubbing one out at the end of her latest video.

http://youtu.be/W1tzURKYFNs

[redshift]

A dim memory has just popped up of Motley Crue doing a video for "Girls Girls Girls" that had two versions. It was set in a strip club and in one version it was quite tame and in the other the girls were naked. The biker bar I used to hang out in in the 80s had the uncensored version on the video jukebox, MTV etc played the other one. I wonder if that's where Mr Thickie got the idea from ?

This used to be quite usual, and clubs such as Jilly's in Manchester ran the uncut versions.  I remember having lunch in a pub near Blackpool which had a video wall (back when they were unusual) whilst on an Outside Broadcast.  The lunchtime clientele were a bit bemused by the uncut version of Alice Cooper's 'Poison' which was playing.