Commodification of Female Body: A Study on Nepalese Pop Music Videos

Abstract

This dissertation paper attempts to explore and examine critically the Nepalese pop music videos which display, objectify and reify the female body, through the presentation of female models as a commodity of romantic-sex-object,fetishizing their body so as to cater voyeuristic male gaze. Commercializing their glossy skin and representing their body as commodity, the pop music videos give contribution to the formation and continuation of capitalistic and patriarchal ideologies inwhich woman is nothing more than an object or commodity under the possession of male figures. In choreography or even in the shootings of the pop music videos, voyeurism, fetish impulses and male gaze function, thereby causing the commodification of female body. In the visualization and production of pop videos, the camera-angle posits the women characters as a thing to be gazed at and male characters as principle viewer with authoritative and omniscient power to peep, control, define and direct them who are detected and guided as per the will of male-figure. This thesis paper tries to examine the Nepalese pop videos with the theoretical possibilities of Gaze Theory and Marxist Feminism. The research, thus, initiates its steps to explicate how the voyeurism and fetishization under male gaze leads to the exploitation of female models, thereby causing the commodification of female body in the age of post-capitalism.