Lily Allen's new song & vid

[elportodelgato]

AMAZING, I absolutely love what she has done in skewering the whole sorry sexist music biz in one song

m.youtube.com/watch?v=E0CazRHB0so&desktop_uri=/watch?v=E0CazRHB0so

Any thoughts?

Kiss I thought it was a Comic Relief 'French & Saunders' mash up at first but wrong time of year. Profoundly irritating pop tune.

Message damaged by the nearly naked Black dancers paying homage to a fully clothed privileged white woman. The ironic counter moves will go > over the heads of most misogynists.

Does she really think that those that need to think about her 'message' will bother to? They'll just see tits n ass.

I am glad that Allen is at least trying to do something but I don't see that having 'a baggy vagina' is something to (ironically) celebrate. Try Pelvic Floor Exercises Lily-far more empowering to not piss yourself every time you laugh.

If she is trying to make the point that black women are objectified in a revolting manner by the music industry then it has gone wrong.

it is the men and boys who think it is cool who need to watch and they would never have bothered if the video wasn't like it is.

Unfortunately I suspect the parody and sarcasm will go over the heads of such men and boys who will simply see undressed women and use it as their usual wank fodder. Doubt they will even pay attention to the lyrics.
I doubt these types of men and boys are the sharpest knives in the box.

It's just not true that you need a Tits and Arse video to get played/noticed.

For proof lets look at recent Vevo UK Top 10 vidoes:

Top 10 UK video (vevo) charts week 44, November 2013 as listed in Music Week

1. Katy Perry - Roar

Katy wears jungle outfit but hardly T&A - no other women exploited

1. Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball - massive self exploitation by worlds greatest current attention seeker. Enough said.

1. Onerepulblic - Counting Stars - features band and many different kinds of clothed people. No T&A

1. Eminem ft Rihanna - Monster

There isn't even a video for this, just a black page. An audio only track counts as it was played on Vevo. Good song + no video = VIDEO HIT. No T&A required.

1. Lorde - Royals - very young women has huge number one hit in USA and UK & worldwide. Video largely features young men in boring suburban settings. Head shots of young female artist. No T&A.

1. Everywhere - Soldier - male artist sings in 'arty' B&W video. Few tit shots to break up utter boring singer and possibly naked bodies but it's all very fleeting. So some female exploitation but hardly a T&A video.

1. Conor Maynard - Are U Crazy - Mainly squeaky clean artist though he does get his 'GF' on the bed briefly in her shorts and bra towards the end.

1. Ellie Goulding - Burn - mainly features artist fully clothed.

1. One Direction - Story Of My Life - I couldn't watch whole thing even in the name of research, but no obvious T&A from what I glimpsed.

10. Eminem - Berzerk - here we have the rapper, where you would expect to see T&A. Except it's never really been Eminem's thing - video is mostly E & an older beady guy. I didn't see a single women in it.

(NOTE: I didn't watch very second of these videos but most of them)

So I'm not sure where this expectation is from that you must have a T&A video to succeed?

If you want a huge viral hit then yes Thicke & co nailed it.

Is that was Lily is essentially making a parody of? Cause I'm reading lots of people here saying her video is a valid critique of the music biz and you need to exploit women visually to succeed - the above snapshot/hit chart proves this is inaccurate. I'm not saying the music biz isn't sexist - it is. But Lily really isn't addressing the sexism very cleverly in her pastiche - and she hasn't done anywhere near enough to move past/overcome/justify or even parody her own blatant exploitation of women herself.

It seems to me LA is trying to copy Thicke & co in more ways than one and she is essentially using the same devices to (hopefully) secure some of the attention on her reentry to the music biz.

oh crap above was ment for the Chat thread.

The thing is that the men she is targeting don't watch katy perry videos - they like the T&A ones. They get plenty of online views.

Your list is videos watched by young girls who buy/download music or listen to the radio. it has very little to do with the genre/men she is targeting.

Hmm, I like the idea behind it but waaaaay too much thong-wiggling going on!

I also dislike the overuse of the word "bitch". I can't stand to hear it being used to mean 'woman'. If in context, I'm fine with it - to describe a female dog or "yes, that comment was very bitchy" .

I just don't believe for one minute LA and her Record Company are using her "comeback" single to ironically target men who like tits and arse videos. Not one minute.

She isn't going to gamble her career targeting them and her major record company, Parlophone, sure as fuck aren't going to gamble their video budget on making a point.

They thought that this would work. This is her reentry to the pop world after a much publicised retirement. They are coming out guns blazing hoping to make a lot of noise, provide a foil of sorts to the schmaltz of the JL add, and get everyone talking about Lily Allen, preparing the world for her next single which will be alot more middle of the road (a la Jessie J).

Spectacular FAIL.

If she wanted to spoof the way women/"bitches" are portrayed or treated in the music industry perhaps she shouldn't have had attractive semi naked black girls shaking their ass and all the rest while she lords over them fully clothed. I have no problem with people shaking their semi naked ass, but don't try to dress it up as being a piss take when it just looks exactly like the real thing.

I can't see how this video highlights the problem of oversexual, semi naked women in pop videos. If she had really wanted to get her point accross she could have used male models like the Thicke parody, or had normal looking dancers dressed as doctors or scientists etc. This just stinks of cheap publicity masked with a very thin dusting if irony.

• of irony

This is just a thought ...... I could be over-thinking this and completely wrong ..... but you don't think she chose black women on purpose to actually nail the point? Because it is often black women who are used in these sorts of videos and because she is pointing out that she has privilege where the black women don't.....does that make sense?

Also, the point about the language: she is using the word "bitch" ironically, as part of the satire, and the word "tits" in a similar way. Of course, I understand that this means it might be banned from the radio and some people might not like their 11 year olds to listen but this is still ironic because those 11 year olds have mostly been singing along to the Thicke lyrics all Summer.

And as for the argument that she has to include tits and arse to make teen boys/misogynistic men watch - but they won't get the message anyway...I think that's a red herring because I don't think the main audience is those sort of people. I think her target audience is teenage girls. She is getting them to think about stereotypes and possible challenges to that - and I think that's an important message to get out to teenage girls (surrounded as they are in our culture by the usual pop fare and lads mags etc) and I don't think that's a bad thing. Obviously, it would be great if teenage girls accessed this message in other ways too - by reading feminist literature, web-sites etc - but this video is probably going to target more of them more quickly.

If her message is so obscure that even we on FWR can't easily work out who it is actually meant for and whether using black women is racist or another ironic twist then it spectacularly fails in its purpose - whatever that is.

Well, I suppose there is that....except that "even we, on FWR can't easily work out" might suggest that "we, on FWR" are the be all and end all of intelligent critical analysis. And whilst we are very often, I think we have to accept that sometimes there are target audiences other than us - target audiences who might get certain cultural references quicker than "we" do. I know, of course I do, that this video doesn't stand up to in depth political analysis, but it is a lone light in the darkness for a certain target audience - which may include teenage girls.

Not suggesting we are the be all and end all rosebud, just that our bullshit detectors are pretty good

Great song and message but to me the video is such a let down.

The fact that she herself is covered up while her,mostly black dancers, are scantily dressed and dancing rather provocatively comes across as her protecting her image but caricaturing others.

I preferred pastiche of Robin Thicke.

Dangling I agree the Mod Carousal pastiche is the one that works best - all the participants are engaged and involved in the 'joke'. No one is being exploited or used to make a point.

They describe why best themselves:
"It's our opinion that most attempts to show female objectification in the media by swapping the genders serve more to ridicule the male body than to highlight the extent to which women get objectified and do everyone a disservice. We made this video specifically to show a spectrum of sexuality as well as present both women and men in a positive light, one where objectifying men is more than alright and where women can be strong and sexy without negative repercussions."

I think most are able to discern that Allen was trying to make a point by using black dancers. The problem is that it doesn't work. Because doing exactly the same thing isn't a parody. There is nothing at all to differentiate her treatment of black dancers from the ones she attempts to parody. All dominant people in these videos are dressed - she is dressed. Normally the dominant ones are men, dressed, the less dominant, women, naked.

Here we have a white woman, dressed, and black women, naked. If that's not a pretty depressingly accurate view of race power relations, hard to know what is.

no doubt did it better when I was a teen.

I think if I were that age again the Lily Allen video would confuse me. Fighting the objectification of women by objectifying women and using derogatory language won't work. Most teens are a lot more superficial and will see the images and hear the words and think take those things away when they've viewed it. I really like the idea Lily is trying to get across I just think it could have been done in a more clever way, without using the words tits and bitch and all the twerking.

if she is targeting young teen girls - she might not be able to. I doubt it will be shown on MTV before 9pm (unless significantly cut - hence losing the over the top look and feel).

My daughter is 11 and i wouldn't want her to watch because she just wouldn't get it. My 14 year old son would understand the irony, but I still doubt he would find it on TV - he will get to it via twitter. That is if the parental controls will allow it.

What i am pointing out is that Lily seems to be targeting a specific sector of teenage boys and men who go searching for that stuff. Girls will see it too - but they won't be looking for it and they won't see it by accident on MTV either.

of course the publicity has probably meant everyone's seen it.

Lily Allen herself has described her demographic as "young girls".

Yet when Jamelia commented it was a shame there wasn't' a clean version of the first LA album as her daughter would love it LA slated her saying it wasn't her responsibility to make music for Jamelia's daughter. Roll on a few years she declines to make a range of maternity clothing (to follow on from her clothing range) on the grounds that her demographic was "young girls".

I think LA is perpetually confused (I do love and till play her first album and yes I would love a 'clean' version). However I do not believe anyone in the world would reasonably think LA's demographic is young men/teenage boys.

I don't like LA because the song she has released is that awful John Lewis song. Which will no doubt net her money even though her voice grates and she is less relevant than she was 5 years ago. So she tries to create favour whilst the Cyrus backlash is going on. Personally just see this as a marketing ploy to make her money. She has never cared about other dancers and models in the past and considering the video and her attitude in the duet with Prof Green sorry her agenda is to fill her bank balance first and last.

I think if this was an attempt at satire, it's an admirable aim but she just didn't manage to pull it off.

I'm about the fact that she is being slated for racism more than someone like Justin Timberlake who I think also uses black women as props in his detestable videos but the statement she released responding to the criticism, shows that she doesn't get it.

Although I suppose anyone mainstream tackling this is good. It would be good to think that no asshat like Thicke or Timberlake or 50 Cent or whatever other nauseating misogynist could release one of these mindless vids again because of this, but because this so missed the mark, that's not the case. Pink's vid is much better than this but hasn't received half the coverage at least in the UK.

It is time men were shown how utterly fucking naff they are in these videos and I'd be delighted if LA had shown it, but as someone else said, she ran out of ideas. It's just not quite there.