Project 3

Louis Fonsi's Despacito

Sypnosis

In early 2017 Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi released a song called Despacito. This song quickly rose to the top of the charts. Awards including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Short Form Music Video. The song is an amazing song with a beat that makes almost everyone start dancing and there's no denying that it was the song of the year, but I do think there's an obvious reason why it also received the best short-form music video. As in the video, you see women dancing in a sexy manner and being positioned in a sexual manner against men. In the whole video, Luis Fonsi has women around dancing. If a music video ever represented Jean Kilborne's "Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt" Advertising and Violence, this would definitely be a good representation.

Camera angels

Throughout the music video there the camera was more focused on the women’s body and their body features. There are many times where there are shots of the woman's rear end. Kilbourne states, "Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it products, imbues them with erotic charge" (Kilbourne pg. 489) It is clear what their intentions were. These women are being objectified for their “perfect” bodies and physical features to get more views.

Figure 1

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Male pressure?

Every time you see Luis Fonsi or Daddy Yankee there are women behind them or on them dancing in a sexual manner. Throughout the video, there are women everywhere dancing seductively. In Kilbourne's article she says, "The popular culture usually trivializes these abilities in woman, mocks men who have real intimacy and idealized a template for relationships between men and woman that is a recipe for disaster: a template that views sex as more important than anything else, that ridicules men who are not in control of their woman." (Kilbourne, pg. 491) Women should not feel any type of pressure when men are around them.The public has very different views about what society values most in men and what it values in women. While many say that society values honesty, morality and professional success in men, the top qualities for women are physical attractiveness and being nurturing and empathetic. This should not be the case at all.

Setting

Another aspect to this video is the setting. The video takes place in what seems as a club. In Killing Us Softly 4 it mentions how ads tell us one thing about women and that is that the most important thing about us is how we look, making us strive for flawlessness. All these women in the club are dressed in short dresses and very appealing to men.

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Conclusion

In all, in this music video, You can see the sexualization and how women are objectified. People have become blind to sexual objectification and pressures put on women today because it almost seems normal. It is a norm for today's society for women to be looked at like objects, that we are used to it. As a man, I see this as a problem to our world, and this objection of women should not be as it is today, but women need to start to respecting themselves first. Women nowadays objectify themselves by what they wear, booty shorts, yoga pants, short skirts, cleavage always showing,see through clothing. If women really want respect they should start with respecting themselves firsts. The same can be said about men also. If we start respecting ourselves more I think humans in general won't get as sexualized and objectified.

Works cited

Kilbourne, Jean. "Three Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt." Rereading America. Eds. Colombo, Cullen, Lisle. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's P. 2013.

Killing Us Softly 4. Perf. Jean Kilbourne. Dir. Sut Jhally. Media Education Foundation, 2011.

Luis Fonsi “Despacito”(feature Daddy Yankee) Youtube Luis Fonsi, January 12, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJQP7kiw5Fk

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