50's "Ayo Technology," The Male Gaze, and Music Video Beyond Male Fantasy

"Music videos," writes Saul Austerlitz in Money For Nothing, "for the most part, are intended for men's eyes, providing them with endless opportunities to delectate in the spectacle of beautiful women performing for their pleasure." Austerlitz goes on to quote from Laura Mulvey's groundbreaking, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," which deconstructs the male gaze in Hollywood cinema (to put it in simple terms). Mulvey writes, "Going far beyond highlighting a woman's to-be-looked-at-ness, cinema builds the way she is to be looked at into the spectacle itself." Sut Jhally has explored this "male dreamworld" of music videos in a series of documentaries entitled "Dreamgirls." Jhally argues that such portrayal of women in music videos shapes cultural opinion and expectations of women. MTV's toughest critics have argued that the predominance of such male fantasy images has greatly influenced the fashion and sexual behavior of young, impressionable women over the past two-three decades.

But the issue of expectation extends to men as well. Men raised on the images of MTV come to expect a certain submissiveness on the part of their female peers. Such expectations are undoubtedly unfair but come into play in our culture on a constant basis.

50 Cent is by no means a feminist. In Pink's "Stupid Girls" - a critique of seemingly counter-feminist pop icons such as Jessica Simposon and Paris Hilton, she sings, "What happened to the dream of a girl president?/ She's dancing in the video Next to 50 Cent." Granted, scantily-clad fantasy women are a constant star in 50's videos. Yet, his latest, "Ayo Technology" explores this darker side of the fantasy world - yet its message remains slightly ambiguous.

Visually speak, "Ayo Technology" - which also features Justin Timberlake and Timbaland - is not simply a bikini filled fantasy, but a much darker dreamworld of voyeurism and sexual violence. Timberlake moves through rather confident, seemingly on a never-ending mission to revoke his teeny bopper status by continuing to make himself as creepy as possible. Similarly, Timbaland seems always eager to make himself seem as weird as he can. 50, on the other hand, steps through the video's sexual fantasies somewhat awkwardly, almost embarrassed to reveal so much of his own vulnerability.

Lyrically, "Ayo Technology" is about sexual frustration. 50 and Timberlake have built these sexual expectations through viewing of music videos and pornography - only to find that the women of the real world in large part do not act like this. "I'm tired of using technology," sings Timberlake of his unfulfilled sexual desire and inability to get off in the real world. Pathetically, he adds, "She wants it, she wants it," singing to absolutely no one in particular. Are we to blame 50 and Timberlake for these expectations of submissive female behavior or are they simple naive products of popular culture.