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Unfortunate Implications/Music: Difference between revisions
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* [[
** Black female singer Ciara's video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raB8z_tXq7A&ob=av2n Love Sex Magic] displays her as a total sex object to him, a white man. This is especially unfortunate given the history of white male slave owners using their female slaves sexually.
** There was also his ripping off [[
** The strip tease on his FutureSex/LoveSound show, it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The women were almost entirely naked.
** He defamed [[
* "Do They Know It's Christmas?", the song that effectively launched the [[Charity Motivation Song]] genre in 1984 in response to famine in Ethiopia, wears its heart on its sleeve and clearly has it in the right place... if you overlook the fact that many of the people whom it's exhorting the listener to wonder about whether they know it's Christmas either celebrate the holiday at a different time to the (presumably Western) listener or don't actually celebrate the holiday. The song was parodied by one of the GTA games with a name-drop of a song called "Do They Know It's the Fourth of July?"
** [[South Park]] mercilessly lampooned it in a Christmas special, giving Mr. Garrison a song where he obscenity fueled, racist rant about how he travels the world to wish all the non-Christians a merry Christmas. It [[Crosses the Line Twice|crosses the line about six times]] with lines such as "God is going to kick your ass you infidel pagan scum."
** Chumbawamba [[Take That|needled organizer Bob Geldof perfectly]] with their first album "Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records."
** The implication when, after they sing about how horrible those people have it, comes the line "Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you"? [[
** There's also the line "there won't be snow in Africa." The better question is, does Africa ''want'' snow? As you know, Africa isn't exactly known for copious amounts of snowfall. Wouldn't it be bad for the ecosystem? Also, "Where nothing ever grows / No rain or [[wikipedia:Nile|rivers flow]]"?
** Perhaps the biggest problem with the song is that the famine [[Did Not Do the Research|wasn't caused by drought or overpopulation]] -- it was caused by a Derg government which was forcibly resettling people and stealing the food.
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* Some people have pointed to unfortunate racial implications in the video for "Cupid's Chokehold" by Gym Class Heroes, which shows the singer having two unsuccessful relationships with black women (one of whom argues with him, the other cheats on him) before apparently settling down happily with a white girlfriend, portrayed by Katy Perry.
* [[Michael Jackson]]'s ''Ghosts'' was a 38-minute short film/music video from 1997, with a story serving as a metaphor for his 1993 child molestation scandal. Jackson's hero Maestro, a loner in a creepy Gothic mansion, is set upon by a [[Torches and Pitchforks]] mob when they learn he's been secretly sharing ghost stories with local boys. The Mayor (Jackson in heavy makeup) demands the "freak" leave; Maestro summons a troupe of ghouls to dazzle and terrify the crowd. This clip didn't get wide U.S. exposure until 2001 and hasn't been run again there since 2003 (when Jackson was once again accused of molestation). It doesn't even appear in full in the advertised-as-complete ''Michael Jackson's Vision'' DVD box set of his videos, because even [[Dead Artists Are Better]] can't overcome its ugly implications:
** A black male adult in the mob (played by Mos Def) is an example of [[Uncle Tomfoolery]]. As [[
** Maestro had the boys -- ''none'' of the kids are female! -- keep their meetings a secret, and one of them is berated by his older brother for letting the secret slip. We're probably meant to assume Maestro was worried about people being scared of him, since they freak out over ghost stories...but his antics are intended as a metaphor for activities that included intergenerational sleepovers. These are not the same thing!
** The Mayor is an obese WASP stereotype (see [[Acceptable Targets]]), unlike the thin, black Maestro. The Maestro suffers from a bad case of [[Protagonist-Centered Morality]]; he possesses and tortures the Mayor to punish him for threatening to expel him from town, and later fakes his own suicide just to frighten him with his reappearance. Worst of all, he's commonly interpreted to be a caricature of Thomas Sneddon, the district attorney who tried to bring Jackson to trial -- apparently, people who try to investigate child molestation allegations are bigoted bullies who deserve to be mocked and tormented.
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* Another notorious example of [[Michael Jackson]]'s work going wrong was "They Don't Care About Us", from 1995's ''HIStory''. It's supposed to be a [[Protest Song]], but is so vague about who "they" and "us" are that his use of anti-Semetic slurs in the second verse suspiciously stood out. He insisted he was speaking up for all oppressed people, but nevertheless rerecorded it for later pressings of the album and the single version.
* The portrayal of women in music videos in general is just chock-full of unfortunate implications. There are way, way too many examples, but they're all shown in the ''Dreamworlds'' documentary and its sequels. Particularly disturbing is a clip near the end of ''Dreamworlds 3'' when, in an unidentified rap video, a woman is kidnapped and made to dance for her attacker, in a set up that is [[Rape Is Love|portrayed as romantic]].
* [[
** Not to mention, she put on the white dress because she was going to the prom. Most people don't wear T-shirts and shorts to the prom (though ditching the glasses wasn't necessary).
** The message of the song has also been summed up as "She wears short skirts / I wear t-shirts / she's a slut / and I'm a special snowflake" considering the implied [[Slut Shaming]] in the song towards the "other" girl. Not to mention what happens when you imagine how the song would sound if [[Double Standard|the genders were reversed]].
* The Ides of March song, "Vehicle". Peppy and upbeat with an ''awesome'' trombone part, it's pretty creepy if you listen to the lyrics. A sexy stranger in a black sedan wants you to hop inside his car? He's got candy? He'll take you places? He wants you, needs you, and (great God in Heaven) he loves you?
* The rap bridge of the song "Eenie Meenie" by [[
* [[Katy Perry]]'s "California Gurls" ([[Grammar Nazi|their spelling]]) felt the need to include the line "I wish they could all be California girls" (which itself is a reference to a Beach Boys song). Yep, all girls should totally hang out on the beach in [[Stripperific]] outfits and high heels (who the hell wears high heels to the ''beach'' of all places?), being ogled? If some girls are proud enough of their bodies to ''want'' to do that, more power to them, but apparently girls should ''all'' be exhibitionists now.
** Another Katy Perry example is the video for "Last Friday Night". Binge drinking aside, it basically says that to get anyone to like her, the [[Hollywood Nerd]] had to pull a [[Beautiful All Along]]. Thanks for that, Katy. Even if it was supposed to be a parody of 80s movies which had similar stories, the parody falls a bit flat.
** And then there's her alter ego Kathy Beth Terry stroking the abdomen of an unconscious jock and then later peeking into his underwear to check out his package. Technically, [[Double Standard Rape (Female
** ''[[Camp Straight|Ur So Gay.]]'' (again, her spelling) All of it. And to a lesser extent, ''[[Kissing Under the Influence|I Kissed A Girl.]]''
** "I Kissed A Girl" also plays into the L.U.G. (Lesbian Until Graduation) stereotype, also refers to the eponymous girl as "My experimental game" and the singer doesn't even bother to learn her name. Yowch.
* The [[Florence and
** The violent one was the original intention, but that didn't stop the British press making lewd jokes about the other.
** Their new ''No Light, No Light'' video has a voodoo person who happens to be black manipulating her white innocence with a voodoo doll while she get's rescued by a group of white young male boys in a choir. The racism implied in this video is immense. It gets even worse when you factor in that the Voodoo priest is played by an Asian man in dark body paint. They could have at least hired a Black guy to play the really racist Black stereotype. You just chalk it up as Blackface and leave it at that, but there's an even more unfortunate implication that it expands the axis of evil from just Black people to ANYBODY who isn't White.
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Out of all the thieves that trained her, none of them could tame her." }}
** It also paints all gypsy woman [[Hot Gypsy Woman|as being slutty]] and using men for their own ends. Another interpretation is that the singer is using "gypsy woman" as a euphemism for any temptress, and not really aware that Roma are real. Which, obviously, [[Did Not To The Research|isn't better]].
* Gino Vanelli's "Wild Horses" is clearly meant to be the promise of a man refusing to abandon his lover, come hell or high water. But it's easy to interpret the lyrics as the rant of an obsessed ex-lover (or a date-raping [[Stalker
* The [[Siouxsie and
* United Kingdom's performance in the 2011 [[Eurovision Song Contest|ESC]] Was made by the boy bland Blue, which has three white members and one black. On stage, three of them were dolled up in what looked like elaborate tuxes, while one of them was wearing nothing but a vest that vaguely resembled one of those tuxes with the sleeves ripped off. You may guess which one...
* Rap and hip-hop culture have been criticized, on both casual and academic levels, for promoting misogyny, distrust or outright hate for the police, glorifying criminal culture, and a few dozen other things.
* The greater war ([[Fandom Rivalry]]) which is always going on between two artists, always female. [[Lady Gaga]] versus [[Britney Spears]], [[Britney Spears]] Versus [[Christina Aguilera]], Rihanna Vs Gaga, Gaga Vs Kesha...meanwhile you can love Bruno Mars and [[Justin Timberlake]] at the same time easily. (Within Pop). (Cannot speak for any other music world)
* Craig Morgan's ''International Harvester'' opens with the line "I'm the son of a third generation farmer, I've been married ten years to the farmer's daughter", which serves as an excellent opportunity to teach listeners about the proper use of articles: the way it's written, the singer has been married ten years to his own sister, with whom he apparently has two sons as later stated in the song. So he and his wife are married siblings, and his sons are inbred. All this, on top of the song's ''actual'' meaning, which is that the singer is so pleased with himself for being a good ol' boy that he doesn't care what an inconvenience he is to the three mile's worth of traffic jam he's causing by driving a combine harvester on a highway. Some Southerners believe this song promotes negative stereotypes.
* Beyonces "If I Were A Boy" basically boils down to "Men can't love or understand women" and "Being a man is all cake and cupcakes." Several other songs by her have the same basic message, something [[Todd in
* [[
* It's difficult to listen to [[
** That's the point. The band have been explicit in stating that "One Vision" is about Fascism.
* The music video for [[
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