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Report claims sexism and racism in music videos is “endemic”, calls for compulsory age ratings

By | Published on Monday 11 August 2014

Rewind & Reframe

A new report has found that “sexist and racist stereotypes are endemic” in music videos and called on the government to apply compulsory age ratings to them. Calvin Harris’ ‘Summer’ and Basement Jaxx’ ‘Never Say Never’ were particularly singled out as recent examples of “highly sexualised and racialised music videos”.

The report is published by Rewind & Reframe – a joint project between charities The End Violence Against Women Coalition, Imkaan and Object – which has already called on the BPI and David Cameron to support online age ratings, and on Vevo to “properly” enforce its rules on hosting explicit and harmful content.

Since these letters were published, the government has, as previously reported, asked the BPI and British Board Of Film Classification to work on a voluntary pilot scheme for applying age ratings to online music videos. And from October physically released music videos will have to be submitted for classification, where they previously would not.

This report is seemingly a move to lay on more pressure as work on the pilot scheme slowly continues, with the report’s author, Dr Maddy Coy, saying in a statement last week: “This paper sets out what is known about music videos – that sexist and racist stereotypes are endemic – and that this can be related to harm in the real world”.

Whether age ratings on videos will actually have any effect, particularly online, is a matter up for debate. And, of course, apply age ratings to videos doesn’t mean that they will be less sexist or racist.

Misogyny in music and the music industry was debated in a wider sense at this year’s Great Escape – read our reports and listen to the discussions here.



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