How convenient to caricature someone whose work you oppose by reducing them to a cartoon parody. Like I haven’t had enough Helen Lovejoy clichés to last a lifetime? Oh, and look, another media studies academic watching The Simpsons. Are we impressed yet?
Where Stephen Harrington sees “a graphic critique of post-feminist female sexuality”, I see Kanye West holding a woman’s decapitated head. Where those like Harrington see ambiguous, complicated narrative and linear narrative fantasy, I see semi-naked dead women swinging from ropes around their necks.
When I see Rick Ross in the ‘Behind the scenes’ You Tube clip tucking into a plate of raw meat before a spreadeagled dead woman on the table, I see the brutalization and degradation of female sexuality. I don’t think ‘Oh, check out that satire’.
King Kanye has produced a carnage of female corpses, brutality and eroticized violence: torture porn. I agree with Zerlina Maxwell who described it as ‘a rape scenario set to a soundtrack’.
And Ta-Nehisi Coates has asked, what if John Mayer decided to cut a video with
dead black women strewn about?
But of course my readings are to be dismissed. Because Harrington is a MEDIA AUTHORITY and he knows best.
Harrington’s dismissal of media interpretations other than his own as invalid, wrong, or hysterical is to buy into a predictable stereotype designed to dismiss women and their readings of culture. Only those like himself can coolly and rationally respond to culture. The rest are to be condescendingly dismissed.
Telling women who read oppression and offense into cultural representations that “they are reading it wrong” is to delegitimize their cultural interactions and ignore their perspectives.
Sharon Haywood from Argentina and I started a petition sponsored by Collective Shout, Adios Barbie, the Coalition Against Trafficking Australia and CATWA International, and Media Watch (U.S) calling on Universal Music Group to withdraw the video. That petition is hosted on two well respect global sites for activists: Care2 and Change.org. So far 10,000 have signed.
We believe that the mainstreaming of videos like this increases desensitized and callous attitudes toward violence against women. Women are reduced to sex-doll like playthings. They are slaves and bitches who can service a man’s sexual needs, even when dead. Men are brutal and dominant, and have no empathy for women.
We hoped to challenge the view that women’s pain and suffering is perfect fodder for entertainment.
A New York teacher, Monica R, commenting on the Care2 petition site, wrote:
…I teach [in the ‘hood’] in a very rough zip code. This crap is the ONLY music these kids listen to, so it has everything to do with violence against women because it forms their opinions.
… I have to hear the high school boy say “b–ches are only good for three things, f—ing, cooking, and cleaning.” I have to hear the high school girls…explain how you know a boy really loves you if he hits you.
Rappers…promote the ideas that the measure of a man is how many b–ches he can f—, or how much violence he can do, and that women’s only value is what’s between their legs, and as a punching bag. And that harms women and men.
Those kids just don’t seem to understand that misogynist rap videos are just graphic critiques of post-feminist [read anti-feminist] culture.
While not specifically naming West, international recording artist Moby may as well have in this article from 2005. Moby asks why racism is seen as bad but misogyny seen as cool. To those creating music which glamourises misogyny he writes: “you have blood on your hands, and you should be deeply, deeply troubled at the culture that you’ve helped to create”.
Sex is a ‘source of negativity and fear’ for so many women and girls. Yes. But it’s not the fault of my colleagues and I. West’s video is one great big dog whistle to all the women and girls who’ve had to put up with abusive sexuality that their pain is just good fun and entertainment. And it’s a dog whistle to men who choose to be perpetrators as well.
I talk to a lot of girls every year. They tell meabout being dis-empowered by pornified imagery which conveys their power lies in their ability to pleasure men on demand. They say boys are acting in more sexually aggressive ways towards them. They share stories of coerced sex, unwanted hookups, pressure to provide oral sex at parties and to send naked images. These stories come from girls as young as 11 and 12.
Many are treated as masturbatory aids. Sex is something done to them, not about a mutually pleasurable experience. Akon perpetuates this in his latest hit “I just had sex” in which he thanks all the girls “for lettin’ us f**k you.”
The sexualisation of murdered women on CSI doesn’t make West’s video any better. Just because we haven’t listed every last example of media sexualisation of female destruction, doesn’t mean we don’t see it elsewhere. We just choose our battles, and we’ve identified West’s video as a significant watershed in the de-humanisation of women.
Harrington can keep watching The Simpsons and I’ll keep working with my friends around the world to try to make things better for real women.
As published today in The Punch.
February 16th, 2011 at 7:07 pm
You go girl!
what an excellent, intelligent, well thoughtout, well researched rebuttal of what are basically indefensible positions.
Well done!
February 16th, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Nice response. And you can thank the Punch for at least gaining you another reader.
Would you be comfortable with material like this being kept out of the hands of minors, but still permissible for adults to view (assuming for a moment a pragmatic mechanism existed that allows such a restriction to be easily put in place)?
February 16th, 2011 at 7:32 pm
When we try to make the meaning of a visual narrative (ref. to “the visual representation of post-feminist female sexuality”) into such a layered construction meaning, what we’re really doing is academi-excuse-speak for “we want attention, and we just want to get our power back”. Is it all about power, and the mysogynising of women as an expression of power? Are we women REALLY that fearsome that we need to be all killed off, or visually narrated ambiguously and negatively? Is our society SO insecure?
I guess there’s nothing new here – artists have been cutting up or pornifying women for hundreds of years, but it’s tragic that our society’s visual vocabulary is STILL so limited, and the image makers pass the buck on taking responsibility for perpetuating the limitations.
In the images, the women are anonymous and depersonalised. Imagine naming the women portrayed, connecting them to people, telling their life stories, and identifying with them. Would it then be so easy for image makers to treat their mothers, sisters, daughters, friends in such a visually disrespectful way after that?
February 16th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
I am 20 and an avid fan of todays music and the artistic view I see expressed in film clips. However Kanye’s video and song ‘Monster’ is not in any way art, it is not even cheap art. It is disgusting. I have shown many of my friends this clip both, female and male, and they all agree that not only is this clip wrong but in now way how we, as women, should be treated, portrayed or viewed. I have sworn that if this clip hits video hits I will not only never watch this show again but I will also fight with whatever letters and petitions needed to have it removed. I hope my son will never see this in his life. It is a disgrace to the music industry. Please keep with your uphill fight to save societies view of right and wrong. I hope one day I will be able to help you.
I was a young Mum at Collaroy with D.A.L.E last year and I think you and what you are doing is incredible. I have just bought your book today and look forward to reading it. =)
February 16th, 2011 at 7:52 pm
Jordan Rastrick: Assuming that such a mechanism were in place now – would you be okay with other forms of hate speech being widely available, so long as not to minors? Would you expect homosexual people to be okay with anti-gay propaganda being widely available, so long as not to minors? Would you expect people of colour to be okay with anti-black propaganda being widely available, so long as not to minors?
Why on earth should women be okay with misogynistic propaganda being available widely – in every.single.public place that we inhabit, in fact – so long as it’s not available to minors?
Would you like to live your life that way?
Have you read anything about rape culture? This is a good starting point if not –
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html
February 16th, 2011 at 7:58 pm
I am SO sick of the argument, “The thing you mentioned is bad but THIS thing is worse, therefore your thing isn’t bad after all.” That’s like saying a broken leg shouldn’t hurt because getting your leg ripped off by a bear is so much worse.
Yes, there are hundreds of examples out there of violence (against men and women both), eroticised torture, misogyny, racism, sexism (again, against men and women). Actually probably thousands of examples. Does that mean we shouldn’t mention any just because we can’t mention them all?
I’ve watched Kanye’s video. I don’t see it as satire. Add a bit more nudity and it could be a porn clip. I’m not saying this as an uptight wowser who assumes anything slightly ‘sexy’ is pornographic – I’m saying this as someone who had a porn addiction for over three years. (Yes, women struggle with porn too.) I know what porn looks like… it’s violent and it’s racist. Overwhelmingly, women in porn are white, and ‘interracial’ porn means a large, ‘monster-like’ black man brutalising a smaller, generally terrified looking white woman – reinforcing the century-old racist myth that black men are animals just itching to rape decent white women.
Porn treats women as faceless, worthless, dehumanised objects. They are often bound and almost always silenced. Even when women in porn have ‘power’ (as a dominatrix) they are STILL treated as objects who exist to please men. Women in porn are dressed in slutty, fetishist, lace and leather garb while men wear shirts, trousers, jeans, normal clothing.
Any of this sound familiar, Kanye?
The video is demeaning, brutalising and degrading towards women. It’s not the only example. It probably won’t be the last example. There are other examples of men being brutalised – these offend me too. We won’t be able to protest every example we find. We’ll probably miss some. For every example we find, someone will be able to find another that’s worse, or one that is better. For every example we find, someone will come back and say we don’t understand the humour or the satire. They will tell us we’re silly to get upset about it. You know what? I really don’t care – because I WILL NOT be told what I may or may not find offensive.
February 16th, 2011 at 11:43 pm
Melinda, I’m sorry that you are the target of such halfwitted justifications of misogynistic behavior. as I was reading, I teared up a little bit over the reality of the situation and how real it is when you get stories coming from that of an 11 or 12 year old girl.
You’re a wonderful role model… I’m always so glad that I found this blog because it’s opened up my eyes as to what behavoirs and mental conditionings that I will not, should not and dont WANT to ever accept from any man or media outlet.
You are a blessing.