Documenting Your World in/as Practice: Mahdiyyah Karriem: Week 5 Analysis

In my video collage, I decided to address the theme of shaming women for their choices to be “provocative,” or openly sexual. I decided to talk about this because I don’t like the fact that people criticize others for exercising their right to do what they want. I think that all people, but specifically women are berated by unwanted opinions of others. People should have the right to express themselves how they want and I chose to celebrate them and their confidence. When I first started out with this video collage I actually had a different vision all together which surprisingly helped my process. At first I was going to make the video about Instagram models and the stigma that they faced so I made a list of names and then searched videos. Unfortunately, I couldn't find music videos with them in it. Although they weren't in it, I noticed other women who had starring roles in the music videos so I pieced together videos of them I found on youtube. As I kept listening to the song, I kept focusing on the part where Mariahlynn says, “Wait a minute, you come to my page throwing shade, and you think you better than me.” This part stuck out to me because on social media, a lot of famous women who are openly sexual on their posts receive countless amounts of negative comments criticizing their choices. I kept thinking, how could a person claim to have morals and values but continuously looks down on, and judges another person. So, long story short, I chose videos of women, some famous, some not so much and pieced it together. I chose this process of finding videos and then piecing it together because it was the easiest for me. The limitation I found with finding some of these videos was that in order for me to use the video, I would have to watch the entire thing to find maybe twenty-seconds of a scene. Although this was a limitation, it allowed me to give kind of a choppy appearance. I liked that each woman is only shown for a few seconds and then reappears throughout the entire video. One specific choice that I made was to use a song that I normally wouldn’t. I was kind of hesitant to use this song in combination with the scenes from the music videos because I was afraid that it was just to sexual. I personally am a conservative person and I don't dress risqué or anything like that so I was afraid that people would think the video represented my choices. Because it is such an explicit video, I definitely took a risk. Through making this video, I learned even more about myself. I kept rethinking my choice of video and if I should do it but it was a message I thought I needed to share. I stepped out of my comfort zone yet again and it feels great.

Where I got the material from:

Videos:

Future - Monster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjVvTod8SB0

Tyga - 1 of 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8_A9x3NCu4

Niykee Hinton ft. Migos - Bad Intentions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uUApCWptYE

Kash Doll - All the Way Up Remix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVrWlEII8u0

Cardi B - Forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGneou4uJII

Ming Lee - Snob Life - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89JqXkdeD-k

Ming Lee - Japanese Denim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwtwWvNuzW0

Kylie Jenner - Glosses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtoRzI0vKJE

Young Thug - Turn Up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJagA5R2wR8

Future - Rich Sex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhNe0YBIrLA