Rachael Mahan

Dr. Tsai

DNCE 3373.50

29 September 2018

Response to “Pynk”, “Make Me Feel”, and “Chun Li”

After viewing this week’s videos, I have to say I was very disappointed at where the

music industry has ended up over the years. I don’t really pay any attention to the music industry

outside of Christian artists, so I was quite shocked at how completely vulgar, profane, and

indecent these videos were. As for what these videos do for the hip hop movement, I would say

they actually harm it. I say this because, in reality, I do like rap and hip-hop music. I like the

upbeat style and I have been able to find plenty of Christian hip hop artists out there that I enjoy

listening to, but this would turn me away from hip hop if I didn’t have the Christian form of it

simply because it curses too much and shows too much of their bodies for my liking. However, I

seem to be the only person who had this issue since I could find absolutely no other criticism for

this during my research.

As for what the two videos from Janelle Monae have to do with the gender and sexual

fluidity movements as well as the #metoo movement, I think a lot of conclusions can be drawn

from the video. I actually didn’t find any criticism from these two videos, everyone loved them

and thought they were great at empowering women and especially black and LGBT women. For

the #metoo movement, it promotes this a lot just by talking about women especially in the

“Pynk” video. It is especially helpful at making women more okay with talking about their

vaginas and sexual health. I actually liked that it was sending the message of talking about your
sexual health and that vaginas are normal and nothing to be ashamed of, I just didn’t like the

style in which it was promoted. As for the LGBT movement, I would say that both videos but the

“Make Me Feel” video in particular promote this movement. They show Monae having sexual

contact with both men and women, so it shows her sexual fluidity in that she does what she and

her partner are comfortable with whether that be a male or female.

As for Nicki Minaj’s video, I found plenty of criticism about the cultural appropriation. I

had also already seen a challenge of people lip syncing to the video and some were dressing in

traditional Asian dress or fixing their hair in double buns and/or with chopsticks as mentioned in

the video. I also think that Minaj’s video hurts the hip hop movement because cultural

appropriation has become very widely acknowledged lately and I think some people will stop

listening to Minaj because of this and if other rappers continue (some have before Minaj), then

other people may just leave the hip hop movement altogether.

Since hip hop has been a male dominated world for so long, when women first started

joining the movement, they often were tomboys or at least acted as such in order to try to fit in

and try to prove that they could make it in what was known at the time as “a man’s music.” Now

Minaj and Monae are stepping out and both being more feminine in this hip hop movement and I

do think that with make a way for more women to feel comfortable joining the movement.

However, I also see it as somewhat of a problem because I feel like they are sexualizing

themselves and making it harder for women as part of the #metoo movement because they are

just showing off all parts of themselves as if nothing is reserved for themselves and their

significant other. I think I will stick to Christian rap since it suits me best 😊