Who says female corpses aren’t sexy?
Two dead women in lingerie swing back and forth from the ceiling from a chain around their necks.
Two young women are slumped on a silk-sheeted bed, like corseted lifeless mannequins. A man advances on them. His intentions are clear.
Another woman in fetishized clothing lies spread-eagled on a table in front of a man eating a huge plate of raw meat.
Have I been exploring the far reaches of on-line torture pornography and snuff movies? Was I checking out necrophilia genre?
No. I was watching rapper Kanye West’s new video teaser for the single ‘Monster’, from his new chart-topping album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
With contributions from Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj and Jay-Z, the Monster preview is a mini horror movie – with all the horror suffered by women. The men don’t seem horrified at all by the female corpses littered through the haunted mansion, the apparent victims of a serial killing. In fact, they seem to quite like it. It seems to turn them on.
Some of the descriptions of the sneak preview video mention ‘bodies strewn around’. Yes, there are bodies. But they are all women’s bodies. As far as I could tell, there are no dead men, just dead women.
This is gendered violence. It’s not depicting just any old corpse but a clearly female one and then, clearly eroticised.
Dead women a turn off? Not at all. Kanye West, on the bed with the two young white dead
women, shows no hesitation. He moves the lifeless arm of one onto the leg of the other, before cupping the porcelain like face of the first woman to kiss her.
Hanging from the rafters in stiletto heels, standing rigid in lingerie, expired on a bed. The white women in these scenes are depicted as subordinated to the black man, reminiscent of the pornographic representation of black men who love to ravish white women, to tarnish and spoil their ‘pure’ bodies.
Limp, floppy, rendered powerless these doll-like bodies retain their seductive, sexual allure. Sure, they might be dead. Sure they can’t consent. Sure they wanted it.
I wonder who thought of this scene?
In the ‘Behind the Scenes’ youtube clip for Monster, another rap artist, Rick Ross, is seated at the head of a table. Before him is a plate laden with large slabs of raw red meat.
Also on the table, a dead woman, in underwear, her stockinged legs spread-eagled on either side of the plate. Perfect viewing for the royal Ross as he tucks into the meat and wine (her flesh and blood?).
In another scene, Ross reclines on a long couch, nonchalantly smoking a cigar while women hang dead and slightly swaying, from chains around their neck.
The only two living women seem to be a maid and the black female rapper (often likened to a black Barbie doll) Nicki Minaj. They may be alive. But they are still subordinated.
The maid genuflects to Ross as she serves him. Minaj is on all fours baring her teeth like an animal about to be attacked. Her backside, swathed in black lace, is in the ‘presenting position’. As one of the youtube preview clips describes it: “This is a 30 second sneak peak of Nicki Minaj’s HUGE ass.”
This representation continues the legacy of the fetishization of black women’s ‘booty’.
As to the lyrics, there’s the usual repetition of ‘muthaf-ucker’ and bitches and the obligatory references to oral sex (‘Head of the class and she just want a swallowship’).
Then there’s these lines: “I put the p-ssy in the sarcophagus” (which, in case you’re wondering, is a flesh eating coffin) and “rape and pillage a village, women and children”.
The clip is not only interested in fetishizing female bodies – it revels in fetishizing female pain, female passivity, female suffering and female silence. The ultimate female is the quiet, passive female – a mannequin – who accepts violence, abuse and suffering while remaining hot and sexy.
Expect to hear boys singing along to it soon. This is the message they are imbibing:
Women are slaves and bitches who can service a man’s sexual needs, even in death. Men are brutal and dominant, and have no empathy for women. Men enjoy dead women as sex and entertainment. The female body is to be devoured, reduced to the same status as meat. Female bodies should be displayed before men as a great feast for their consumption.
And the creators of this feast of violence will probably win a ton of awards and commendations and sponsorship deals from major companies.
Just watch.
19 Responses
Thank you for bringing this to our attention Melinda.
I feel sickened to think such appalling sentiments will be permeating our pop culture sometime soon. If we can motivate public censure (and rightly so) against other types of ‘art’ that go too far in pushing sexual boundaries and preying on vulnerability, then surely the Kanye’s clip is as good a case as any. There is ‘adult themes’ and there is filth and perversity, and this comes into the latter. The popularisation of necrophilia and sexualisation of victims of crime is as good a case as any to start a strong – and public – revolt against musical artists who have clearly gone too far.
There is one thing that describes those who made this clip well, and that is it’s title: Monster.
I might- though that is a very big MIGHT- agree with part of the argument that art is not meant to be taken literally- I MIGHT accept the fact that individuals read things differently… I MIGHT accept this this if we were NOT talking about a horrendously violent piece of snuff pornography being passed off as mainstream entertainment- I might accept it if we weren’t talking about a piece of snuff porn that actually forms part of a much larger cultural backdrop of this stuff… I might accept it if the centuries of patriarchal endorsed violence against women who have been raped, mutilated and killed didn’t exist… I might accept it if I hadn’t personally almost lost my life because of patriarchal hatred towards women and female sexuality… Then again- I might just decide to point out that this stuff is not only offensive- it’s hurtful, insulting, degrading and humiliating. It makes me, personally, feel less safe. Every time I see this sort of misogynistic crap I am reminded -yet again- that there is a section of people out there who feel perfectly entitled to caste women as nothing but sexual objects to use and then kill or discard…
Oh my….cannot believe this. It goes without saying that this is discusting, degrading, abhorrent… I could go on. But Here is all I can think about at this moment: just like Nina F refers to, people I’m sure will argue that art should not be taken literally. Again, as Nina F states, even if we accept this argument ( which I do not)…but if we were to accept this I just cannot fathom what on earth is their message then? What is their intent? What are they trying do do here? What can they possible say to justify this? Or am I being so naive thinking that surely they really don’t think this way about women??
This “”Criminal audio-visual”” will make some men, even richer.
This is incitement to ‘HATE CRIME’ not ‘art’.
I find these videos so disturbing. in fact I didn’t watch all of the ‘behind the scenes’ video – it made me feel physically ill.
whats worse though is reading the comments on the drum unleashed article. the number of people who think this is ok scares me. one even says ‘they don’t look dead to me, just stoned’. frankly i can’t see why that makes a difference – the girl on the bed is being moved, literally controlled by a man, and whether she is stoned or dead she is helpless to stop him grabbing her face to kiss her, or moving her hand onto the leg of the stoned/dead girl beside her. honestly its the stuff of horror stories.
but what takes the cake is the person who says ‘Kanye West & Jay-Z are both intellectually refined & culturally astute musicians’. wow. ‘intellectually refined’ is definitely not the description I’d use of a man engaging in sexual acts with girls who (dead or stoned) are unable to consent to whats being done to them. the only word that springs to mind is rapist.
it all leaves me feeling very disheartened and angry. perhaps I shouldn’t read the comments from now on
who’s bankrolling this? Surely this is not the only product they are selling and if so, surely, there’s call for some boycotting that would hurt them? Or is the whole lot owned by a niche group of ‘artists’ who only release crap like this?
Alternatively who out there – come on brothers and sisters with artistic inclinations! – can execute an admirable, eviscerating spoof of this shite and show it up as just another naked emperor, caught masturbating by his mother.
Would you view this video differently if the women were black?
I don’t see how you could.
“The white women in these scenes are depicted as subordinated to the black man, reminiscent of the pornographic representation of black men who love to ravish white women, to tarnish and spoil their ‘pure’ bodies.”
Why is it necessary to mention the skin color in this paragraph?
In fact, why is this paragraph necessary at all?
What is the implication in the use of the word ‘pure’?
Is it suggesting that black men are impure?
Why would you perpetuate negative racial stereotypes in an article aimed at eradicating gender inequalities?
I think we need to censor racial stereopyes.
I think it’s about time to boycott anything Kanye West related.
Thanks for the comments, really appreciate it.
Alice to address your point. I am referring to a specific genre in pornography, which represents white women as wanting to be ‘ravished’ by black men. I am saying that that this reflected in the Monster clip. I am not perpetuating a stereotype, just critiquing it. Also note I refer to the way Nicki Minaj is also positioned in the clip – on all fours, her backside in the air. This also is typical of pornographic representations of black women, which emphasise this part of her body.
Observing the use of racist-pornographic stereotypes is not condonding them.
I wonder how well this clip would be going down if instead of being conveniently dead, the women in the clip had had a few too many at the pub and gone back to Kanye’s place for a cup of milo? What were they expecting, anyway, dying looking all sexy like that?
Melinda, you views on black men and female sexuality are rather strange. What exactly are you saying here? When you say something like “The white women in these scenes are depicted as subordinated to the black man, reminiscent of the pornographic representation of black men who love to ravish white women, to tarnish and spoil their ‘pure’ bodies”, this is exactly the same crap the Ku Klux Klan spew (i.e. they believe that once a white woman has sex with a black man, they’re “tarnished” forever).
What you are clearly doing is projecting your own feelings about interracial relationships and sex onto this video. Are white women not meant to have fantasies about having sex with black men or gasp, actually have sex with real black man? You say “perpetuating a stereotype, just critiquing it”, but then you try to defend yourself, you end up stereotyping not just black men but women as well. You do know why people criticise you don’t you? It’s the tut-tuting finger waging over sex and your perceptions of people’s sexuality. It’s really insulting to have someone project their prejudices onto your own sexuality (and how would you know how people felt and thought about their own sexuality or how they view women or men anyway? You got ESP or something?). It’s worse when you throw race into the mix. If you didn’t mean to be racist, then please for the love of god write a little clearer and think about what you’re writing.
@ Belinda. Obviously Melinda is arguing that the clip can be linked to the eroticisation of racist stereotypes in porn about black men and white women. It is well know that this pop music genre cynically markets racist stereotypes, and so does porn. I can’t help but think that your mis-reading is just about trying to discredit Melinda and that the politics of the clip itself are of little interest to you.
Belinda, you’ve quoted this line…..
“The white women in these scenes are depicted as subordinated to the black man, reminiscent of the pornographic representation of black men who love to ravish white women, to tarnish and spoil their ‘pure’ bodies”
…….but you haven’t read it carefully enough. Melinda is referencing the pornographic representation of black men as tarnishing the ‘pure’ bodies of white women. These are not her views, but pornographic scripts and yes, incredibly offensive to all involved.
How much more evidence do we need before our male dominated society wakes up and recognises that yes men do indeed hate and hold women in contempt and I mean all women, irrespective of their race/ethnicity/culture – women are not human in men’s eyes.
Catherine McKinnon is right – women have yet to be accorded human status. Take note – no male was depicted in this malestream porn as ‘dead’ – no yet again it is women, men use/abuse in order to facilitate their never-ending male sex rights to women.
Don’t be side-tracked by focusing on whether or not this violent women-hating video was about coloured women or white women – because in fact this video was about normalising male hatred and male contempt for all women.
I’ll say it again – this women-hating piece of propaganda is all about normalising male hatred and male contempt for all women. Yet male supremacist society is indifferent because ‘no male was harmed/dehumanised’ in this violent sadistic video.
Although there haven’t been any comments here for over a week, I hope it’s not too late for others to read this…
I’ve just spent the last day reading the Drum Unleashed commentary section of this article, which currently stands at a record 1000, and feel compelled to comment about it here.
I’m no stranger to online gender discussions and the vitriole they seem to inspire. Yet I find the Drum comments for this article to be one of the worst collections of ad hominem attacks on an author that I have ever encountered. Here is an excerpt from the latest comment so far:
… ‘I see from the posts that [Melinda Tankard Reist] is in fact a Christian lobbyist pretending to be the voice of feminist reason … but it seems to me that MTR has some serious psychological issues regarding sex and sexuality, such that we should be extremely careful in accepting any of her views on these subjects.
It also seems to me that her non-disclosures [of her Christianity] are intentional and her real agenda is a surprise to many otherwise well informed commenters.’ (19 Dec 2010 9:50:16am)
So, in other words, Melinda’s criticism of a video clip that fetishes male dominance over dead women makes her fair game to have her mental health smeared, as well as her sexuality, her credibility, her professional reputation and any religious affiliations she might have. Those commentors who have defended her and/or share her views on the video have received the same treatment.
I have complained to the ABC about this. But other than that, I feel so helpless in the face of such strident misogynist bigotry. While believing themselves to be so open-minded, these defenders of ‘freedom of expression’ treat any kind of criticism or awareness raising about misogyny in the culture as driven by nothing more than a hatred of men and an overriding agenda to bring back 50s style censorhip.
Melinda,
Most of this comment is directed towards women such as Jennifer Drew above, but I see you write extensively on female rights so if you could read it too it wouldn’t be any harm 🙂
I am a young male and am disgusted by this video, but please don’t label men with your criticisms of the ‘artists’ involved! I’m a male who is saddened by the way women are portrayed in videos like this! Please please please do not get so blinded by righteous anger at this video that you label ‘man’ as sexually vicious and respecting of women only when they are sexualised. That is NOT the case, nor is it, in my opinion, the case that society as a whole is male-dominated and anti-women! From very painful experience I have seen that in areas such as custody battles men like my father have to fight tooth and nail to obtain fair custody settlements. Programmes such as Loose Women here in the UK also have a panel of women who often talk about their sexual experiences with men in a way which could be described as objectifying men! And just as women feel pressure to conform to standards of beauty, so men also have that pressure on them.
Jennifer Drew’s comment: ‘Yet male supremacist society is indifferent because ‘no male was harmed/dehumanised’ in this violent sadistic video’ is absolutely ridiculous! I am disgusted by it, and the reaction of my housemate was priceless! He wasn’t rubbing his hands together with glee as some of the comments here suggest he might, he was disgusted as was I.
Just one more point (you will be pleased to know :D), you point to Nicki Minaj as playing a similar role to those of the dead women – that of eroticised, sexualised meat essentially. I can’t help but think, especially looking at some of the posts above, that SHE should have refused to take part. She was not, I am sure, forced into it. Rather she was likely motivated by the payday that would result from it.
Melinda, I agree totally with your message but please understand (and to be honest this is more at some who have commented than yourself) there are a great many brothers standing with you against this evil video and the message it contains. As a Christian I am motivated by Jesus’ example to treat women with the utmost of respect, equal to men and with more honour, but even men without this great example are disgusted by this video and all that it suggests. Whatever people’s views on moral relativity, this video is clearly very wrong and there are many many men who are on your side.
Thank you if you got all the way to the end of this comment!
Your brother in fighting for equality
Jono
I just went to defspot.com and watched the entire video. As much as I detest rap music, I have to say there are not just “white women” being killed, etc. There are a few men and black women, so it’s not quite what you seem to be implying. This video reminded me of the kind of thing that Alice Cooper and more recently, Rob Zombie have done. It’s ugly and gross and not my kind of thing; but Monster is not much different than those metal videos.
To reiterate, this is in no way an endorsement, because I can’t stand rap. The lyrics are generally famously brutal to women and degrade the people who listen to it and who perform it. It’s only unique in that it tries to be as “horrific” as a lot of metal videos.
I just don’t have any words, Nina F in the second comment said it all. Anyway, to Jonathon: When the vast majority of your slimy brothers do indeed appear to gleefully enjoy and defend such a gross dehumanization of women, your petty ass whining that “not all men are like that” is kinda freaking sickening. Why is it important to you that we focus our attention AWAY FROM the harm that so many men do to women, instead of focusing our attention ON THE HARM ITSELF? What is your purpose?
It’s a manipulative misdirection tactic, and you were sent here by the patriarchy to be their tool. If helping women was your goal, then you’d be over at the rape club, telling other men knock it off. You wouldn’t be over here, telling the little laydees to focus our attention on how noble most men are.
Hitler was a rather polite gentleman, I’m told, BUT I DON’T FUCKING CARE.
Oops I hope swearing is allowed, forgot to check. Apologies (and “freaking” is a good substitute!) Anyway, whenever I think about the holocaust or any atrocity suffered by a group of people simply because of who they are, the first thing I notice is that nobody EVER pops up and cries “don’t forget how nice the oppressors are!” It just doesn’t happen.
At the most, all anybody would ever say is “hey don’t demonize the oppressors” and yet, when the oppressors have indeed performed multiple instances of grossly vile disturbing incredibly harmful acts — one half of the planet constantly dehumanizing those they claim to love –, please notice that even under those conditions that the vast majority of radical feminists do NOT “demonize” men as a class.
When we have a situation where men never stop raping women eon after eon, somehow for a woman to say, “hey men never stop raping” is magically considered “demonizing” men. No, it’s just pointing out the obvious. And when delineating the bloody obvious harm that men inflict onto women is considered inappropriate, something else is going on, like internalized male supremacy.