Till It Happens To You: The Potential Positive Impact of Entertainment Media

For those of you who haven’t watched Lady Gaga’s new music video, Til It Happens To You, you should stop what you’re doing and give it five minutes of your day. Since it’s release, it has renewed the dialogue on the rape issue on campuses nationwide.  While she sings, the stories of four people are followed as they are assaulted and then struggle through the psychologically devastating aftermath. The video ends with a statistic: “1 in 5 college women will be sexually assaulted this year unless something changes.”

I’m sure we all hear about this topic every now and then, as we do have campus resources to combat this and there really are people out there speaking out against this issue. However, the difference between handing out campus flyers and an avowed celebrity taking an artistic and prominent stance against the issue is astronomical. Because of who Lady Gaga is, the media fell upon this music video like a pack of ravaging wolves, sharing it left and right and analyzing every second of it. It trended on Facebook and was emotionally discussed by my sorority, whose national philanthropy is domestic violence prevention and awareness. 

The reading “Entertainment Television as a Healthy Sex Educator: The Impact of Condom Efficacy Information in an Episode of Friends,” has relevant conclusions to the possible impact of this music video. Although it analyzes entertainment TV, I am arguing that a music video of this prominence can fall under the same category, as it is originally is meant for entertainment viewing (it now has over 14 million views on YouTube). The experiment’s objective is to assess whether television can occasionally include messages about the risks of having sex that may have a positive effect on youth. I am stretching that to include healthy sex mentally, as in sex that is reciprocated by both parties. The study surveyed a sample of 506 adolescents 12-17 years old who had been regular viewers of Friends the previous year. This would most likely mean they were also were regular media consumers. The study concluded that entertainment television can serve as a healthy sex educator and can work in conjunction with parents to improve adolescent sexual knowledge. It can point out the consequences that result from ill-purposed or careless sexual activity and create a dialogue between the adolescent and the parents. Therefore, positive messages in the media give parents the chance to reinforce them. The vividness of Lady Gaga’s music video is strong enough that lingers in the viewer’s head for long afterword, while the evidence found in the above study suggests that this will promote future healthy sexual activity, physically, verbally, and mentally. As Lady Gaga so prominently portrays, sexual messages in the media do not deserve to be perpetually treated as negative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmWBrN7QV6Y

Collins, R. L., Elliott, M. N., Berry, S. H., Kanouse, D. E., & Hunter, S. B. (2003). Entertainment television as a healthy sex educator: The impact of condom-efficacy information in an episode of Friends. Pediatrics, 112(5), 1115-1121. doi: 10.1542/peds.112.5.1115