http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw
"You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_RqWocthcc
"Knock You Down" by Keri Hilson.
These two popular songs (music video links above) reproduce a VERY dominant idea (discourse) in our culture: "The One" (i.e. the right ONE person for true love).
Frankly, this idea can be incredibly frustrating and quite devastating to our actual relationships. Seriously, how many times are we going to have to hear ideas about recognizing your true love--finding that "perfect" partner? How many times are we going to have to listen to the notion that recognizing the perfect person simply requires time, patience, or some investment on your part? Doesn't this make it sound like those people who don't find "The One" aren't really trying, or they're doing something wrong?
While “true love” is the primary goal in each story, these videos are encoded with very different messages about the process of finding true love, and this impacts the meaning and our emotional responses to it. The female character in one video is just waiting around, while the female character in the other video is more actively involved in the search for “The One.” The imagery used to represent their searches suggests that these female characters have different levels of control over their romantic worlds. In a culture that emphasizes the idea that women’s happiness depends on finding their “true love,” what might be the social consequences of these different representations? Is one of these women more “empowered” than the other - why or why not?
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