In Sut Jhally’s documentary film, Dreamworlds 3, he depicts an astoundingly unrealistic portrayal of gender roles seen in the tragic frame using the medium of music videos and what they represent in today’s culture. Jhally makes very clear the ways in which this society accepts the normative actions in these videos, as he also makes abundantly clear that these are no longer actions that are limited to the “dream world,” but instead, these ideologies are also wrongly internalized and seen as socially acceptable in every day life. He uses Burke’s understanding of the method of perspective by incongruity, along with juxtaposition, and decontextualization to make evident the serious effects that this type of thinking and objectification has on the roles that society constructs for gender and the responsibilities or lack thereof that accompany that construct.
In order to understand the points that Sut Jhally conveys in his brilliantly assembled documentary, Dreamworlds 3, one must understand the methodology that he used to portray the tragic frame-Burke’s perspective by incongruity. Perspective by incongruity is essentially an attitude or way of thinking that is not in harmony with or cohesive with its surroundings or what is thought of as one’s norm-in “lamens terms”, thinking outside the “box.” There is more than meets the eye to everything that is known to one as familiar, and with familiarity, comes a sense of comfort that keeps people from looking at the world through other perspectives, even if just to better understand their own. In Dreamworlds 3, Jhally challenges the viewer to see that the music industry influences the way society accepts the justification of women as well as the simplification of men by simply watching disturbing music videos and accepting them as normal when in fact they should be looked at as anything but typical. In using Burke’s theory, Jhally was able to explain in narrative form, how society becomes polemical when attempting to understand anything outside of the normative references that are typically relied on. The way that gender is perceived through the tragic frame is wholly accepted in today’s mainstream, pop idolizing society, where it is completely acceptable to see a half naked woman on her knees in a submissive position while a shirtless, muscular man towers above her on a billboard. In Dreamworlds 3, Jhally uses the realm of what is seen as entertainment to depict how women are consistently objectified as men and some ethnicities are also simplified. In music videos, as seen in Jhally’s documentary, women are happy to prance around in bikini tops and mini skirts while washing cars for men who are pouring alcohol on their already wet bodies as they are also having dollar bills thrown at them. If this isn’t a clear form of objectification and over sexualized portraits of womanhood, what is?! Men are seen in these same videos as aggressive, sex obsessed, dominant figures pushing women onto beds while the female singer is singing of purity and innocence. This is not innocent, and this is not pure.
In using the strategy of juxtaposition, Jhally makes the anything but subtle comparison between what is glorified and glamorized in the music industry and the events that occur in real life that are influenced by the subjugation of feminine and masculine roles in this medium. What happens when those behaviors are projected into real life situations? Teens grow up watching these popular musicians and celebrities star in these flashy videos where women are dancing bare breasted with fast, expensive cars, while shopping in impossibly expensive stores….this is showing young people an image of a nearly unattainable reality and that it’s ok to want these things and to accept those same behaviors. An example lies in the way that Jhally placed a scene from a hip hop music video where women were allowing men to pour alcohol all over their faces and practically bare bodies, while they were dancing around and having their asses slapped next to a scene from the Puerto Rican Pride Festival in Central Park from the early nineties. In the scenes from the true-to-life festival, women were shown while men slap their asses and their shirts were being torn off and men were chasing them down and pouring liquor all over them; however, in the real world version, the women were less than thrilled about it, and they weren’t glamorous video vixens, rather they were sexually victimized women. There has to be a point where the industry takes responsibility for promoting the ignorance and lack of respect that they show towards gender and race, and Jhally uses juxtaposition to truly bring much needed attention to this point.
In the strategy of decontextualization, Jhally also uses Dreamworlds 3, as a way to disassemble what is seen as the societal norm and puts the same material in an unfamiliar territory, making the viewer feel somewhat uncomfortable as the old images are being put into a newer, less socially normative context. Jhally did this by taking the music videos that society sees as acceptable, and turning them into another medium that doesn’t appear as entertaining to the viewer, but more as a public service announcement. He put the videos to the background of more serious and ominous music, not the music originally corresponding with the video. He also adds in his even more ominous narration, creating a much more somber tone than the original music would allow. This presentation takes what society would typically see as normative media and places it in an unfamiliar context that elicits feelings that the viewer would not usually associate with watching a music video. When a perspective is changed and things are forcefully put out of place, it changes the entire meaning of the story, and this is made evident by Jhally’s use of de-contextualliztion in Dreamworlds 3.
Upon watching Dreamworlds 3, the viewer is forced to see that nothing is as it seems, even in the mythical, flashy, and impossibly unrealistic world of music and entertainment. Perspective by incongruity, juxtaposition, and decontextualization are strategies that were used by Jhally in order for the viewer to walk away from this notion of the "dream world" with an understanding of the ways in which socially accepted media can be more harmful to society than most would ever begin to understand. By objectifying women, simplifying men, and by misconstruing the roles of gender and race, the music industry as a whole is responsible for projecting these misleading images to the youth in society today, thereby creating a generation relying on false information to make decisions that will possibly misshapen their futures and redefine what they believe their roles to be in society.
