Thursday, February 23, 2017

How Modern Music Brings Back The 1920's

The song “Be Together” by Major Lazer is old school. It expresses many different stereotypes, but there are a few prominent ones for men and women.  This work also expresses a few ideologies, one of those being “women in the roaring 20’s.” The gender stereotype expressed for men in the song are the gangster. For women the seductress / mistress stereotype is shown.

The group that made this song is called Major Lazer. They are a group of guys who use many different people to perform in their songs. They recently made album with many different singers, men and women. One of the songs in the album “Be Together” is performed by Natalie Bergman, and the song is from her point of view.

There are many examples of the “women in the roaring twenties” in this work. The first line of the song is a great example of the ideology of the twenties Natalie Bergman says: “Let me escape in your arms, baby I'm yours, baby I'm yours.” This supports the ideology of the twenties because in that decade women were expanding their ideas about how they were allowed to act and talk. They wanted it to be socially acceptable to be attracted to men. Women wanted to break the stereotype that they were supposed to be pure and chaste sexually. Another example of how this song expresses the ideologies of the 20’s is: “Maybe on the dark side we can be together, be together.” This expresses 20’s ideology because women in the 20’s wanted to show their, “dark side,” more. Women wanted to be more disobedient and more out of the home, and this line connects to the 20’s idea that women wanted to disobey their parents in order to be with men.

Beyond 20’s ideologies, “Be Together” expresses a lot of stereotypes of men and women. The first stereotype of women the song expresses is the seductress stereotype. A great example of this in the song is: “Maybe on the dark side we can be together, be together.” This quote shows that she is trying to seduce the man to the, “dark side”. This is part of the seductress stereotype. One of the stereotypes of men in the song is the gangster. This stereotype is expressed by this quote: “Tell me, is this freedom, baby? Chasing after danger, making my heart race.” This expresses the gangster stereotype because the guy is trying to impress the girl and win her over. This is also expressed by this quote because he is being a bad boy. Another quote that shows the same thing is this quote: “He was a dreamer at heart chasing the stars, chasing the stars wings spread to the sun I miss you so much, I miss you so much.”

The idea of women expressing themselves and still being accepted for it hasn’t been around for very long time. But popular culture and modern media are accepting it by leaps and bounds. This song isn’t the only piece of culture that expresses these ideologies and stereotypes.


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