- Rihanna's graphic new video has shocked viewers with torture and murder
- As a mother, Sarah Vine is terrified about the message it gives to girls
- The video justifies and glorifies torture, drug-taking, murder and racism
- It is freely available to the legions of young girls who adore Rihanna
When I
first watched Rihanna’s repulsive new video for her repulsive single,
B***h Better Have My Money, it had only had a couple of million views.
It was last Wednesday, in fact, shortly after Nick Grimshaw had
mentioned it on his Radio 1 Breakfast Show.
Even
Grimshaw seemed a little bit shocked — and he’s not exactly a prude. It
had made him feel ‘proper’ sick, he said. Hmm, I thought to myself.
Better check this one out.
Not
out of some desperate, sad-sack desire to keep up with the young, you
understand. But as the mother of a 12-year-old girl, I need to know
about these things.
Scroll down for video
Extreme violence: Rihanna appears
covered in the blood of her hapless victims in her new music video,
'B**** Better Have My Money'
Glorified: Rihanna waves a gun in the
background while her victim lies naked, bound and gagged in the
foreground, in the video that is freely available for the legions of
12-year-old girls who support her
What was it General Monty said? ‘Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted.’ Never were truer words spoken.
And
since motherhood these days seems to involve fighting a losing battle
against the endless stream of filthy, violent and downright misogynistic
images being rained down on children’s heads from all variety of
different media, I make it my mission to know about these things. Even
at the detriment of what remains of my sanity.
So
after I’d finished the school run, I made myself a cup of strong coffee
and logged on to Vevo — the free-to-view, uncensored music video
streaming channel used by most pop artists — to watch it.
Like I
said, by then it had received ‘only’ a couple of million hits (a mere
bagatelle in terms of the reach of a global ‘superstar’ such as
Rihanna); but it didn’t take me long to realise it was going to get a
lot more.
As I watched, I actually felt my pulse quicken in anger.
By
the time it had finished, I wondered whether I ought not to report her
to the police. Charges: pornography, incitement to violence, racial
hatred.
Deep breath now: I shall try to describe it without completely ruining your Monday morning.
A
rich, blonde, white woman with expensive hair and even more expensive
breast implants is putting the finishing touches to her toilette.
On the hunt: Rihanna, sporting a dark,
berry lipstick - is seen looking furious as she drives over to the
blonde, white woman's luxurious apartment
Unsuspecting: The video begins - after
a foreboding shot on bloody legs popping out of a wooden chest - with a
pretty blonde woman getting ready and leaving her apartment
Kiss goodbye: The woman - soon to
become Rihanna's unsuspecting victim - dons a chic, white suit and picks
up her Pomeranian before heading into the elevator
She strolls through her beautiful apartment, scoops up her Pomeranian pooch, kisses her husband goodbye and steps into the lift.
As
the doors close, we see Rihanna, styled like some sort of voodoo
fashion victim in black lipstick and hallucinogenic eye make-up, pouting
away ominously next to her in possession of a large trunk.
Racial stereotyping: Rihanna, styled
like some sort of voodoo fashion victim in black lipstick and
hallucinogenic eye make-up, pouts ominously next to her rich, white
victim
And so it begins: However, as soon as
the doors close Rihanna's single begins playing and she is next seen
holding the pup while the mystery woman is nowhere to be seen
The doors open again, and the blonde is gone: beaten up, one assumes, and put inside the trunk. Rihanna is holding the dog.
From then on in, it’s like Grand Theft Auto, but without the gentle romance or subtlety.
Rihanna
and her two female sidekicks (one a glacial blonde, the other held
together mostly by studs and chains) humiliate and torture the white
woman in a variety of sick-making ways.
This
video contains, in no particular order, extreme violence, torture,
drug-taking, guns, negative racial stereotyping (towards both black and
white), sexual exploitation and murder. Actually, sorry: not just
contains, but also glorifies and justifies.
She
is, of course, immediately stripped naked, then trussed up in the
foetal position in the back of their getaway car. Then she is dragged to
a disused warehouse, where her costly hair-do swings upside down as she
is strung up by her Louboutins from the ceiling.
Rihanna,
meanwhile, affects to smoke marijuana, gesticulates incomprehensibly as
though she were some genuine gangster (and not just a spoilt little
rich popstar), blethering on in her dreary monotone about being owed
some money by the ‘b***h’ of the title, who later, it transpires, is the
wife of her accountant (the banality of her grievance being entirely
lost on her: surely a stiff lawyer’s letter would have sufficed).
The
gang move on to what looks like some kind of oil rig, where they paint
lipstick on their (still naked) victim’s gag, sunbathe in a variety of
impractical fur bikinis, wave guns around and generally loll about the
place with their legs wide open.
(In
fact, such is the frequency at which we get to view Rihanna’s gusset,
I’m actually starting to wonder whether she might not have some kind of
medical condition which prevents her from keeping her legs — as well as
her stupid trap — shut.)
Treasure chest: Rihanna drags the
large trunk, presumably now containing the beaten body of the woman, out
of the luxury apartment building
At
various points, the singer phones the woman’s husband in an attempt to
make him hand over a ransom — but sadly he seems more interested in
taking advantage of the poor woman’s absence to live it up with a couple
of call girls.
Increasingly
frustrated at his unwillingness to pay up, Rihanna and her stooges
progress to a motel, where a Sapphic sex party ensues, in which their
victim is spread-eagled naked on a bed, plied with drugs, and the
various participants take turns to wave their bodies in her face.
Eventually
she wakes up, and tries to ask a passing policeman for help, only to be
hit over the head with a glass, and then drowned in a swimming pool.
Road trip: The women pose casually as they hit the road, seemingly ignoring the naked, bound hostage in the back seat
She's in charge: However, she then
enjoys a cigarette break as her henchmen load the trunk - and body -
into the back of her car
Having
thus dispensed with her meal ticket, Rihanna returns to the scene of
the kidnap armed with a chainsaw and various hunting knives and sets
about torturing and dismembering the hapless accountant.
The closing scenes see our heroine lying naked in her trunk, blood-spattered and cushioned by piles of cash.
A
few housekeeping notes: this video has no age rating, is free to view
and is unaffected by parental controls, whether activated at source by
your broadband provider or on your computer.
It can be viewed on any mobile device over a phone network.
Not playing around: The victim is
strung up and left swinging back in forth in the barn, as Rihanna seems
to grow angrier, with her phone call likely not going as planned
Let it burn: RiRi walked away after torching a vehicle, in the video that glorifies violence and murder
Typically,
Rihanna’s fan base consists of young teenage girls, mostly of secondary
school age (that is to say 11 and upwards), but she also — as anyone
who has ever eavesdropped on a playground will know — appeals to primary
school children, especially those with older siblings.
And
yet this video contains, in no particular order, extreme violence,
torture, drug-taking, guns, negative racial stereotyping (towards both
black and white), sexual exploitation and murder.
Actually,
sorry: not just contains, but also glorifies and justifies. After all,
the man stole her money. What else is a poor girl to do?
Rihanna
doesn’t have children. But I really hope that one day she does. Because
perhaps then she will understand what it feels like, as a mother, to
live in fear and helplessness.
Now
I wonder, are you familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange,
the 1971 film based on Anthony Burgess’s 1962 dystopian novella?
For
its time, it was a hugely culturally significant piece of cinema. It
seemed to encapsulate what many thought was the breakdown of civilised
society taking place within the wider world. It contained an
unprecedented level of violence, which was linked to a number of
so-called copycat cases. Eventually, Kubrick himself withdrew the film.
The
sadistic brutality of Malcolm McDowell, darkly psychotic in the lead
role of Alex, is at the heart of what makes the film so viscerally
shocking. The sheer nastiness of it is almost unbearable, from coffee
tables shaped as naked women on all-fours, to the twisted clownishness
of the infamous rape scene.
What’s
so frightening about it is the fact that Alex and his henchmen, his
‘Droogs’, are not so much immoral as amoral, wholly lacking in any kind
of empathy or humanity — and as such no longer really human at all.
A
Clockwork Orange was one of the first things that came to mind when I
saw the video for B***h Better Have My Money. All the elements —
amorality, inhumanity, violence and depravity as a hobby — are there,
only with nudity and more designer clothes.
Sweet smile: Rihanna smiled innocently at a police officer who comes over to check what the women are upto
At
least, though, Kubrick agonised over his creation. He understood the
implications of the world he had represented so effectively in art.
He
felt some sort of responsibility for the film, and for subsequent
criminal actions that apparently arose from it. Rihanna, quite clearly,
thinks it’s all some huge joke. What’s more, the Alex character is
ultimately punished for his crimes.
Choice of weapons: When kidnap and
torture doesn't get Rihanna what she wants, she heads back to the luxury
apartment with an array of deadly weapons
Half
a century on, and Rihanna, by contrast, is rewarded for hers. Not just
in the video, but in real life. She is a global superstar adored by
millions. So crime, according to what passes for the narrative of this
video, does pay after all.
Because
what other conclusion can we possibly draw? Certainly, if one happens
to be an impressionable young person, who perhaps hasn’t quite
understood the difference between right and wrong, the message would
seem clear: if people don’t give you exactly what you want, then you’re
perfectly within your rights to go on a drug-fuelled killing spree.
These are the sentiments that, in 2015, are deemed acceptable themes through which to promote a pop song to 12-year-olds.
Satisfied: Rihanna smokes a cigarette
while naked and covered in blood, on a bed on the money she has
justifiably earned in torturing and killing two people
Vicious circle: The seven-minute music
video opens with a pair of bloody legs protruding from a wooden chest,
and closes with Rihanna naked and covered in blood
As I write, the video is four days old and it has received almost 20 million hits.
If
that is not mainstream culture, I don’t know what is. That’s 20 million
times that woman has been strung up by her heels; 20 million times
she’s been drowned in a pool; 20 million times that Rihanna has cut off
the husband’s hands with a chainsaw.
Rihanna
doesn’t have children. But I really hope that one day she does. Because
perhaps then she will understand what it feels like, as a mother, to
live in fear and helplessness.
Not
just of the ordinary stuff — your child being mowed down by a drunken
driver, or getting in with the wrong crowd, or being bullied at school —
but of seeing their childhoods truncated by the kind of careless horror
the singer glamorises, their innocence contaminated by the slickly
packaged sewage she peddles in pursuit of money and fame.
Meanwhile,
this video must surely bring us one step closer to the conclusion we
should have drawn a decade ago. That, for all the many ways in which the
internet improves our lives, there are many in which it also diminishes
them.
What
we are seeing here is not freedom of expression; it’s de-humanising
trash. Such violent fantasies may exist in the mind, but if we allow
them to roam freely across our culture, they become real.
A civilised society learns to censor such things for the greater good of all who live in it.
Without such boundaries, we are little more than savages. And Rihanna reminds us just how far we have fallen.
Written by Unknown
We are Creative copy writers. We love blogging and we actively involved in IT development
0 comments:
Post a Comment