Loaded Guns, Loaded Metaphors: Rihanna’s “Man Down” Video

Loaded Guns, Loaded Metaphors: 

Rihanna’s “Man Down” Video

by Janell Hobson | Ms. Magazine

Rihanna has a genius for controversy. As soon as the music video for her latest single, “Man Down,” premiered this week on BET’s 106 & Park, it created an instant backlash from various groups demanding it be banned from television. However, the outcry is not about depictions of S&M fantasies or a same-sex kiss or even passive acceptance of domestic violence. This time, she is being condemned for promoting murder.

I have to wonder if I’ve seen the same video.

I see a revenge story by a rape survivor, who makes it clear that, no matter what a woman wears or how she dances or if she walks alone at night, rape is wrong and deserves punishment. Rihanna reiterated this message when she broadcast on Twitter:

Young girls/women all over the world … we are a lot of things! We’re strong innocent fun flirtatious vulnerable, and sometimes our innocence can cause us to be naïve! We always think it could NEVER be us, but in reality, it can happen to ANY of us! So ladies be careful and #listentoyomama! I love you and I care!

While I understand the moral concerns about popular messages that condone violence, the hue and cry over this video seem to reflect a deeper anxiety. After all, if parental groups worry that pop stars such as Rihanna are encouraging young women to seek violent retribution, then I wish they would also condemn blockbuster action movies, video games and comic books that preach the same message to young boys. 

Or is it perfectly okay for action figures like Thor or Batman or a regular American G.I. to seek justice through violent means? And what does it mean for the larger public to loudly condemn a fictional scene of a rape victim grabbing her gun and pulling the trigger on her perpetrator, especially when other violent representations in media are not condemned but championed?

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Magazine

Empowered and Sexy: The Ms Magazine Interview with Shayne Lee

Empowered and Sexy
by Ebony Utley

Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality and Popular Culture by Tulane University professor Shayne Lee (Hamilton Books, 2010) revolutionizes the politics of black female respectability. Instead of writing about how hypersexualized representations hurt black women, Lee celebrates black female pop culture icons who purposefully hype uninhibited sexual agency. He defends Karinne Steffans, Tyra Banks, Alexyss Tylor and other women who have been publicly accused of promiscuity. He argues that their attention to masturbation, vagina power, multiple sex partners and reverse objectification will help black women reclaim their sexuality. In a candid conversation with the Ms. Blog, Lee asserts that pro-sex black women are the new sexy.

How did you became interested in erotic revolutionaries?

Shayne Lee: I became intrigued by the ways in which third-wave feminists fought for their right to be both empowered and sexy. I thought that message was missing within black academic feminist thought. Then I realized that pop culture was full of these individuals who weren’t really career feminists but who embodied the kind energy that I thought was powerful from third wave feminism. So that’s when I came up with the idea for Erotic Revolutionaries.

How does your male privilege help or hinder your erotic revolutionary endeavors?

I’ve been told by people that I shouldn’t have written Erotic Revolutionaries because I’m a man. But I don’t think any one [person] can represent the female voice. Gender is fractured by class, by beauty standards, by social positioning in ways that I don’t think one voice can represent other women. So in that way, I feel safe as a man to objectively, or at least the best I can, look at black women in pop culture for the ways in which these women transcend the politics of respectability.

In your Tyra Banks chapter, you argue that she flips the gaze and is able to objectify men. How would you characterize that gaze reversal?

You have these binaries: male/female; male on top/female on bottom; male has agency, power; female is passive and victim. As long as these binaries exist in society, to make them even you have to reverse them for a while. Since men have enjoyed so much agency in objectifying women, there’s gotta be some point where women really go overboard and enjoy those spaces, first of all to show men how it feels to be constantly objectified and second of all to feel the power of subjecting men to the female gaze. Once that’s done enough, maybe we could get to a more equitable form of society where men and women are objectifying each other equally.

Read the Full Interview @ Ms. Magazine