What’s entertaining about women in lingerie hanging by their necks on chains? What’s artful about images of drugged, unconscious women about to be sexually assaulted?
Nothing.
It’s misogyny, graphic and simple.
Instead of artistic expression, political and social commentator Zerlina Maxwell described Kanye West’s music video for Monster as “a rape scenario set to a soundtrack.”
Yet that’s not what many commentators are saying about the gruesome and degrading images in the rapper’s video, which has yet to be officially released even though it’s all over the Internet either in full or in part.
West has suggested that the video’s necrophilia and brutality are aimed at generating controversy and sales. Still, there’s a profusion of intellectualizing and rationalizing about the video.
Much of that commentary includes attempts to absolve African-American men from criticism of their misogynist lyrics and the grotesque images of violence perpetrated on white women because of the history of slavery and colonialism.
Among the most inflated and convoluted praise for depravity as art comes from progressives. Salon.com’s Tracy Clark-Flory deliberately set aside the question of misogyny and wrote that the video “offers a fascinating Rorschach test of our current sexual culture.”
Writing on The Atlantic’s blog, Chris Jackson deflected the question of misogyny saying he couldn’t answer it given all the other examples in popular culture.
Instead he fatuously wrote: “Kanye is like [French Renaissance writer] Montaigne, who said of himself that he doesn’t record being, but passing … The most difficult and most intriguing aspect of Kanye as a rapper is that you never know whether he’s celebrating or satirizing an idea or doing both at the same time.”
However, it’s worth noting that Jackson’s Atlantic colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates disagrees.
Coates described the video as “boring racism, boring sexism that hearkens back to the black power macho of Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver at their worst … the work of a failed provocateur boorishly brandishing his ancient affects.”
…Far from breaking new ground, West’s video only sinks to a deeper level of depravity, bringing the mainstream closer to what’s come to be known as torture porn.
Sign Care2petition here.
Sign Change.org petition here .
See also:
‘So decapitated women are fine with you Kanye West?’ here yesterday.
‘Prevent official release of Kanye West’s women hating “Monster” video’ on The Butterfly Effect blog .
2 Responses
Absolutely correct this latest piece of women-hating garbage is violent misogyny posing as ‘art.’ Of course defenders of this latest piece of male hatred and male contempt for all women are claiming ‘it is art’ or ‘you are racist’ because the male singing in this piece of garbage is black whereas the women are white.
Claiming racism is the issue is another common tactic used by male supremacists who believe they alone are human and women are what? Well we are certainly not human rather we are men’s disposable sexualised service stations – to be used, abused and then thrown away with the garbage. It matters not a jot whether the women depicted are white or not because this video proclaims the violent misogynistic lie that all women irrespective of their ethnicity, race etc. are not human and hence no human was harmed in the making and production of this video.
Such claims are common and they are used to deflect attention away from the central issue and that is sadistic male sexual violence against women is seen as ‘edgy’ or entertaining. Would we say the same if it was images of naked men, some of whom have been decapitated or would we immediately say ‘this is man-hating and is not entertainment.’ I’ve no doubt the answer would be a resounding yes, but because it is women depicted as dehumanised body parts for the sexual titilation of men this is seen as ‘art’ or ‘entertainment.’
Even if women were involved in the production of this latest piece of sadistic male contempt and hatred for women that in no way minimalises the central issue which is ‘women are not human; women exist solely to be subjected to male sexual violence and women exist solely to be sexually exploited for male entertainment. Certainly women have been involved in promotion of male hatred and male contempt for women in the past but as I said above, this should not absolve men of their accountability because it is not women who are the ones driving misogyny it is men and their hatred and contempt for women.
Then there is the issue of profit because this video will doubtless generate huge profits for the producers and not forgetting woman hater Kanye West.
Kanye West is not a monster rather he is a greedy unscrupulous profiter who like the producers of this latest women-hating garbage sees nothing wrong in profiting by depicting women as dehumanised beings. Then too, we must not ignore the misogynistic stereotypes which abound within this video. Almost every misogynistic myth is represented in this video because as we know only men are human and women are vampires. These depictions are gynocide – meaning women are murdered by men because they are female not male. But that definition will be ignored because genocide means men and only men have rights and dignity.
If the so called “defenders” of this revolting video are claiming it is art and that critics are “racist” because of the black singer/white women scenario then let’s ponder what would happen if a white rap singer put together a video clip such as this and had black women half-naked, lying dead and hanging from nooses. Let’s face it – the idea would never even get off the ground and if it did there would be world-wide condemnation.