Mastering the Goal of Theoretical and Critical Perspectives

¶ … mastered the goal of theoretical/critical perspectives because I applied theoretical/critical communication perspectives to an aspect of everyday modern life, namely the hip hop music culture and gender misogyny. In my quest, I wrote a proposal for a paper and a full research paper complete with original research conducted at the writer's house. As with any good research project, it included research in scholarly articles and was supplemented by the important original research. This balance of theory and practice is an imperative to bring about the best quality in research. I wrote the proposal and paper series as an assignment in the winter quarter of 2009 for my Communications 400, Communication Research methods to add to my senior portfolio to show that I completed and understand all of the goals and objectives of my major. In the paper, we are expected to use critical and theoretical research principles in a real-life situation.

The research hypothesis that I put forward is that exposure to mainstream hip-hop culture reinforces misogynistic gender roles and norms and as such affects both African-American males and females. I then raise this research question, namely does the way African-American women are portrayed in the hip hop videos affect the way African-American males treat African-American women?"

I examined hip hop and its misogynistic tendencies as a culture and a subculture to influence American mainstream gender values toward women. As I stated in the paper "The mainstreaming of the hip-hop culture may have powerful consequences on American gender norms in general, including the persistence of sexism and misogyny."

This type of a paper is very important for research because approaches to this topic are usually loaded with stereotypes and prejudices. Objective research helps to avoid the contamination of the research by prejudiced research methods.

When I read the opinions of feminist hip-hop artist Ayana, I came to understand the importance of this kind of research and how critical it is. The status, esteem and reputation of women are under assault by the attitudes exhibited in hip hop, especially with regard to the status of women as sexual slaves and property that can be disposed of at the will of the pimp. The pimp has become the spokesman for the hip-hop subculture and directly influences black males and indirectly white males into directions that are anathema to the rights and dignity of black women in particular and all women in general. In other words, black and white females in a cultural sense are literally swimming in a sea of cultural images that play to the lowest common denominator of humanity and makes women into sexual objects and a product in the packaging of hip-hop records, whether or not they want to be there.

Again, to quote my paper and illustrate in detail the content "This form of media is the primary means of information broadcasting for youth. Plus, the portrayals of hip-hop culture in the media is highly likely to influence African-American youths." An entire generation of black males is being brought up to see women as material sexual objects.