mtv smut: and the men rejoice..

Not that I’m complaining or anything.. but has anyone noticed how much smut has now made its way to dance music videos on MTV?

This recent music video smut phenomenon kicked off with that catchy 2004 “tearing up the dance floor fist pump” commersh anthem Call on Me by Swedish flash, Eric Prydz. If you haven’t seen the video well then let me sum it up for you.. A sexually suggestive video reminiscent of Physical with Olivia Netwon John, but instead of all those fat guys, it’s an aerobics dance class of the choiciest of ladies dressed in 1980s aerobics gear. As the class goes through its “sexafied” workout, the girls spend a lot of quality time rubbing their breasts and slapping their respective buttocks, attracting the alluring eyes of its male viewership. The video was so popular in Australia that it was downloaded 35,000 times onto people’s mobiles. Needless to say, if Bahrain had a functioning 3G network at the time, we’d all be watching and rewatching the video ourselves, instead, we had to settle for leaving MTV in the background until it came up. Luckily for us, MTV has nothing good to offer and relooped the same video a couple of times in one sitting.. Rrraaadiicall.

It seems that the formula of catchy dance tune + pretty girls + sexually suggestive dance moves = popular music video. With a winning formula like that, people remain glued to their TV sets watching and then when they’re walking around the office, they continually hum the tune while mentally recalling the brazen booty of a particular dance sequence… aaah, good times..

The other day, I was at a friends place and in the interest of background noise, MTV was thrown on the telly.. Luckily, it was the dance video segment and I must say, the formula is back and badder than ever. Out of the 10 videos that appeared during the segment, 6 had the formula. I watched two friends fastened to their seats in front of the TV with no desire to even contemplate moving or offer a helping hand while the rest cooked.

Averting my eyes to the screen briefly, my brain quickly registered what was going on in the video, blocked out all the noise and surroundings, and sent neural messages to my body to stop everything and just watch. I remained a catatonic mass disinterested in anything except the girls in skimpy cotton underwear playing football. The booms and beats in the background were of little consequence except for the fact that while that music was on the girls were still running around. We watched the whole video, a football match between the blondes and the brunettes, and neither of us new who won, who scored a goal or what was going on. Yes it did feel slightly Pavlovian, completely sucked into the formula of watching girls move around, but I didn’t care. The close-ups, ohh the close-ups.. After the video I realized the formula and how effective it was… now I feel programmed to definitely watch the next time I see this video come on and I will demand to watch it if possible, and eventually, hum the tune at work. Yes, sex sells and has been taken to a new level.

After the girls playing football I saw the girls in cleaning lady outfits (not French maid outfits, cleaning lady outfits) with cleavage exposed and round heinies bumping and bobbing. The concept of taking a cleaning lady, making her super sexy and just having her move around and clean while dance music is pumped through the speakers, sounds pathetic as I write this, but during the airing, made as much perfect sense as breathing.

There were a couple of more videos that I causally glanced over, and tried to pull myself away from. The one thing that stayed true is that they all kept to the formula: dance music, half naked women, and lots of provocative dancing.

I don’t know if Arabic music videos took a lesson from Eric Prydz or if they knew the formula all along, but the music channels like “Mazzika” can get pretty soft core. I always chuckle when I see the older gentleman on the treadmill at the gym salivating over Nancy or Maria or Alyssa (running out of names) in her latest music video. You hear the claps and cheers, the “aaakkhhhh” s and so on and so forth.

Eventually I had to remove myself from the viewing angle of the screen, I was just becoming antisocial and was getting annoyed with myself because I was slobbering over TV women, and that’s not very becoming. Living in the middle east, we spend a considerable amount of time watching fashion tv. At first, it’s all fun and games watching wave after wave of beautiful models in swimwear or lingerie. But then the reality of the fact sets in, that all you’re doing is frustrating yourself cause hell will definitely freeze over before zainab, khatoon and moza get fit and strut their stuff..