Critical Investigation Task #3 - Historical text analysis and research

I will be comparing my text to Madonna. Madonna began her career in the late 1970's where she got involved in the music industry and soon began releasing her own songs and eventually her first album. She released her first song called 'Everybody' in 1983, which I have analysed below.

'Everybody' is a dance genre song where Madonna uses lyrics that encourage people to dance. The video is completely innocent, with males and females dancing individually around a stage where Madonna is dancing with some back up dancers. One obvious statement in the video is that everyone is fully dressed with no small, tight clothes that female artists wear in their videos nowadays. In fact, Madonna is wearing baggy clothes and almost looks like a tom boy compared to the clothes female artists wear today. Her lyrics are also innocent as she is singing about everyone dancing and it sounds like an encouraging song with no indirect meaning behind it.

This video is completely different to Miley Cyrus' videos as the people are covered up and the lyrics are not explicit at all, but have straight forward innocent meaning to them. One way that it is similar to Miley's videos is that it features a mix of females and males dancing, however in this video they are dancing individually. Whereas in Miley's videos everyone is dancing very close to each other and are touching.

This video shows that a few things have changed from the 1980's to the present. The genre of dance music tends to be faster with more versions nowadays. Before the dance music was very 'disco', whereas now there are more variations such as hip hop, RnB, dub etc. Also, dance music has much more explicit videos as well as lyrics nowadays and is very much 'club' music, therefore targeting at young adults. The style of teenagers and young adults who had grown up listening to dance music in the 80's is much different to the style which is preferred today.

I do not believe that the zeitgeist of the 80's was to be sexy or provocative. Instead, it was to produce an enthusiastic single and video which would be popular with the audience during that period of time. Nowadays it is the opposite, as 'sex sells' in the music industry. Therefore young females such as Miley Cyrus have to be revealing and sexy in their videos as that is what sells and what attracts views and fans.

Moreover, I believe the actions of artists such as Madonna in the 1980's were much more accepted than the actions of female artists now from a feminist perspective. Feminists main belief is in equality and feel as though we live in a patriarchy society which consists of male dominance. This was not the case in the 80's as Madonna's 'Everbody' video shows Madonna being empowered as she is the main dancer with two male backup dancers behind her. Also, she is dancing individually and there is no inappropriate content. However, feminists nowadays are outraged by female artists videos and the fact that artists such as Miley release videos showing their exposure towards males and letting males be the dominant sex in videos e.g. they touch females and dance on them. Feminists would argue that women portray themselves as belittled in media nowadays, whereas they were shown as more equal in the 80's.