ABSTRACT
Among the videos viewed by the focus groups was Try (Sigismondi, 2012), an artistically athletic dance where a male dancer tossed singer Pink to the ground and she kicked him away while she sang about desire. The aggressive tug-of-war of their struggle had him physically overpowering her while she fought back, but at times they were on the floor longingly clasping each other or up against a wall with her legs straddling him while kissing. A key theme in the video is the song’s title, “Try,” from Pink’s The Truth About Love album (Busbee & West, 2012). Another music video, Love The Way You Lie (Kahn, 2010), viewed by the focus groups features Rihanna singing in front of a burning house and Eminem rapping in a wheat field, interspersed with scenes of a couple’s physical altercations and sexual passion, the woman walking away and locking herself in a bathroom, a burning bed, the man taking a powerful swing at the woman’s face, the couple kissing, a burning teddy bear, and various characters being engulfed by flames and playing with fire, symbolizing passion and destruction in a relationship that consumed them. The video ends with Eminem and Rihanna gazing at the blazing house and the couple sleeping entwined, hands clasped together.
