Why We Should Like Violence in BBHMM

Violence in movies can be interpreted in two one ways – for one, it could be used to depict something larger than the movie itself, a theme or message for which the violence is only a tool. Secondly, it could be used for the purpose of sensationalism, because it just “looks cool” or because we are celebrating the violence itself.

Usually film directors or producers don’t set out on a new project just for the purpose of celebrating such violence; it matters how the public understands the movie which requires two sets of criteria: how it matches up to critical standards and how the public receives it. And let’s be honest here. Many people do not read too much into things as most people aren’t trained in film or music analysis but rather learn through the characters vicariously. This is where Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money” music video enters the debate, which contains some very gruesome and gory scenes, where a lot of that violence is directed towards a woman. Is this video meant to be taken literally? What is its deeper message? Will people be looking for the deeper message?

Arguably the most obvious part of the deeper message is that a black woman is in power. The video operates on a revenge fantasy; Rihanna’s character, a black woman, kidnaps the white wife of the white accountant, who owes Rihanna money. Rihanna takes control of the situation when she could have been passively waiting for the accountant to give her her money back. The question of whether she “should have gone to court instead” in the video is irrelevant here, by virtue of the fact that the genre of the video is part-fantastical, part-cult in nature. The revenge fantasy is an artistic choice, where Rihanna leads, and every other character, the white woman, the white accountant, even her white sidekick, follows.

However the means with which Rihanna takes control of the situation has been deemed questionable, because the person whom she is humiliating here is not the white male, who is the object of her hatred, but the white woman, who is, after all, innocent in the context of her husband’s crime. Yet it is the woman is forced to a undergo a series of cruel punishments; she is hanged upside down naked, forced to take drugs, drowned underwater, stuffed into a luggage and it is inferred that Rihanna cuts and saws off pieces of her body. It seems like the perfect revenge porn, able to make to make any misogynist smile with glee and ejaculate in his pants, while the only part when the white man is humiliated is when he is strapped to his chair, mostly clothed, at the end of the music video, for a little bit, while Rihanna is in a transparent plastic dress. It is clear that most of the video perpetuates female violence if we look squarely at the plot itself, and this is dangerous knowing that this is video is not geared towards only an intellectual audience, but an audience that is involved in their own perpetuation of abuse towards women.

Amidst all this feminist hoopla arises another set of voices that challenge how we look at situations where women are humiliated, considering first and foremost, the race of the women involved. These voices call attention to the fact that most people raise their voices when a white woman is humiliated, whereas when a black woman is objectified in the media or abused in everyday life, most of the voices concerned with the white woman in Rihanna’s video are silent and oblivious. First of all, this constitutes a grave issue and those concerned with the portrayal of the black woman are correct, but the argument is invalid in the context of the issue presented here. Just because some women are ignored does not make it less problematic that other women face their own set of sexisms. White woman, though not affected by racism, still face sexism. It is clear that in Rihanna’s music video the white woman is the archetypical trophy wife; attractive, well-dressed, owns a cute pooch. As such, she too is objectified. Maybe she doesn’t face objectification because of her race, but she remains nonetheless an object in the male gaze.

Rihanna too treats her as such – she becomes an object in the female gaze too. The video adopts a misogynist template, where female-on-female violence and hatred ensues. Females abusing other females is not “empowering;” it is misogyny. It is a model where women adopt the attitudes men have towards women and where women compete with other women in order to achieve a seal of approval from a man, reserved for only a few females. Rihanna is not a feminist here; not only does she perpetuate female violence, she becomes a woman adopting the sexist attitudes of society at large, which is more problematic than if a man were to do this since Rihanna is a woman herself and is expected to show some sympathy.

The argument against this is that race is a bigger issue in the music video than sexism. Black women have received racist and sexist agendas from white women as well as white men, so the outrage towards the white woman is justified, especially because black women also expect more solidarity from white women due to the fact that they are both women. This hasn’t always been the case, which is perhaps why there is more violence directed towards the woman than towards the man, because the black woman has expected more from her.

The violence is used to comment on the intersection of race and gender, which means that the violence itself is not what is very important here. What is important is why the violence is used. Why does Rihanna inflict violence in the first place? What is this violence a metaphor of? The video, while outwardly perpetuating violence towards women, is not saying that the violence is the point.

In a larger thematic viewpoint, the music video can be taken as an allegory for the fight against white supremacy. Money is the means to and a symbol for power, and it is long overdue that some of this power be given to the black woman, who is among the lowest in the ladder of social hegemony. “Bitch Better Have My Money” is a way of saying that the white man, who is now at the bottom of the social hegemony ladder due to his status as “bitch,” flipping the script, better give Rihanna some power, and give it now, or else there will be consequences. She fights him using his object, the white woman, as her object, saying, “I will take what you have power over from you to get what I want.”

Rihanna’s character (because that’s what Rihanna is in the music video, a character) is powerful even in her nudity. When she wears the transparent plastic dress, she is owning her sexuality, coming before the white man as he is strapped. He cannot have her; he cannot use her. He is at her whim. It is clear that the white woman’s nudity adds to her vulnerability rather than her power, but why must Rihanna specifically have power over his wife when she could have taken something else of his? Did she necessarily need to inflict violence and humiliate a woman in order to get power and make her point? A more powerful expression would have been to kidnap the white woman and transform her into one of Rihanna’s henchwomen, suggesting the subordinate position that the white woman must occupy in reference to the black woman in order to make the revenge fantasy come full circle, rather than annihilating her totally.

However, the choice of cult movie references, the lurid colors, the means with which Rihanna’s character seeks her revenge, the mockingly stern expressions Rihanna dons, the fact that Rihanna happens to be in the elevator with the white woman at the same time, the fireworks in the middle of the ocean, for example, provide an answer to this question. They point to a farcical, satirical, and funny revenge fantasy, which colors violence in a comical effect, questioning whether violence is really the means towards revenge. Overall, the revenge fantasy remains just that – a fantasy, not meant to be executed but still retaining an underpinning of warning.

It is unclear how much this interpretation of the video will reach audiences. It is also understandable why some feminists have a hard time appreciating the music video as it does include a lot of violence towards a woman, but their pitfall is that they are not reading into the music video enough, they are not coming up with creative interpretations. Yet their voices should not be shunned, as a considerable amount of society is made up of either those ignorant of feminism or feminism’s staunch opponents, for whom the violence towards the woman in the video merely feeds into the larger misogynist culture. We cannot forget that many people comprising this group are taking the violence at face value. Thus perhaps the question ought to not be whether we like Rihanna’s music video for “Bitch Better Have My Money” or not, but why we like it.