Last week I started a discussion about the kinds of ways in which we watch TV and how the overall context of viewing can influence the ways in which we interpret what we see. This week I want to talk a bit more about this.

As adolescents get older, they usually prefer to watch TV by themselves. In general they tend to pull away from parents and stick more to their friends who share more in common with them. We’ve all heard of the ‘youth culture’. It really does exist, and one place where it is truly manifested is through TV-watching.

Although the programme category may be the same, such as cartoons or comedies, the actual programmes in these categories are quite often very different today compared to years ago. Cartoons are a great example. While your son may not enjoy The Flintstones, he may crack up or be intensely interested in some animation out of Japan the way Pokemon took the western world by storm.

In the survey, I asked adolescents whether they preferred to watch music videos by themselves or with others. Of the 439 persons who answered, two-thirds (65.8 per cent) said they preferred to watch with others. However, what they said they preferred and what actually seemed to happen were not one and the same, since in another question almost two-thirds of adolescents (63.3 per cent) said they mostly watched by themselves.

Interestingly, when I examined who they mostly watched with when they did have company, I realised the important role females could play in helping young people to place the contents of music videos in a particular context – If only these females were sufficiently media literate to understand how they could effectively perform this role.

I say this because of the number of adolescents who said they watched music videos with their sisters (43.3 per cent – surely some must be much older sisters), their mothers (23 per cent), aunts (19.1 per cent) and grandmothers (7.3 per cent). Admittedly though, watching with regular friends (42.1 per cent) and with brothers (41.7 per cent) featured prominently, but the point can be made that the females have an edge.

Almost twice as many mothers (23 per cent) as fathers (12.1 per cent) watch music videos with their children. As noted above, watching with sisters had the edge over watching with brothers. Compared to 19.1 per cent who watch with aunts, only 4.6 per cent watched with uncles. Among the older generation, grandmothers were far more likely (7.3 per cent) than grandfathers (2.7 per cent) to watch with their adolescent grandchildren.

When they are not alone, adolescents mainly watch videos with their sisters (43.3 per cent). Although I don’t know if these are younger or older sisters, I can safely assume that it will be a mix, some older, some younger. Next to sisters, they mostly watch with regular friends (42.1 per cent). Next in line are brothers (41.7 per cent). After that it’s with a girlfriend or boyfriend (26.0 per cent).

In the face of availability of music videos on various modes of public transportation, I investigated the extent to which this phenomenon may be playing a role in adolescents’ exposure to videos via this route.

This was still in my effort to understand the various contexts in which videos are watched and who they are watched with. All of this was designed to allow me to get a good grasp of the ways in which these may influence the sexual culture surrounding music videos from a uniquely Jamaican perspective.

From the sample total of 447 adolescents, 17 per cent, that is 76 persons, said they watched videos in various other places apart from their own homes or that of their friends. Of these 76 persons, most (63) said they watched on buses or in taxis. If this sample indeed reflects what is happening at the national level, then we have a fairly substantial number, 15 per cent or so, of young girls and boys with raging hormones seeing what’s likely to be highly sexually suggestive music videos as they ride the buses or taxis. I am told by the adolescents that music buses, as they call them, are very popular among young persons.

A couple years ago, we were shocked at the news of sex on buses and in taxis between teenaged girls and bus/taxi drivers and ‘ductors’. No doubt the teenage boys are in on the act as well. Then earlier this year, we were even more shocked at the revelation of the deacon who did nothing while teenaged boys sexually abused a teenaged girl in a van he was driving and which was videotaped.

Music video on public transportation in Jamaica is embedded in a local culture of growing promiscuity and permissiveness and what I am informed is a burgeoning porn industry.

What then do adolescent boys and girls make of the images they see in these videos and what kinds of behaviours become possible as they enjoy the bus ride, far from the watchful eyes of authority figures?

As I’ve heard from several adolescents from uptown and downtown, girls strategically remove their uniform pockets to allow greater manipulation and enjoyment. There is also ‘no panty day’. These strategies work well on the buses, especially the music buses. For the uptowners who don’t take buses, they work well on the school compound, even in the classroom itself.

Clearly, music video images and the kinds of meanings adolescents derive from them play out within a wider context of existing social realities. At several levels females can play critical roles. The extent to which they can perform these roles is guided by their own level of consciousness and willingness to go against what may be seen as the norm.

Marcia Forbes is a PhD candidate at the University of the West Indies and a former general manager of Television Jamaica

marciaforbes@hotmail.com