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♫ "Are you willing to sacrifice your life?" ♫
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When Kanye West's music video for his hit song Monster was recently leaked on the Internet
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it generated an enormous amount of controversy because of the depictions of women in it.
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The video is reprehensible, I really don't suggest going and watching it if you can avoid it because
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I really wish that I hadn't seen it.
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To give you a sense of it, this video is built on this whole "Sexy Dead Woman" trope.
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Which seems to be popping up a lot lately.
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Throughout the video we are presented with a series of lifeless, nearly naked, mutilated women's bodies.
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We see women, or parts of women, all white, draped across sofas, propped up in beds, hanging from nooses,
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and all with perfectly applied make up and high heels.
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In addition to the sexualized, dismembered body parts, we're also treated to
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Kanye holding up a freshly severed head.
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In another scene Kanye is pictured lying in his bed, rearranging the lifeless bodies of
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two lingerie clad corpses.
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The Black women in the video aren't dead like the White women are, rather they're
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evil, cannibalizing, Kanye attacking, man-eating, demons.
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So let's recap: White women, eroticized, mutilated and dead. Black women, animalistic, savage demons.
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Monster is a single from his number one hit album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy".
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So whose to blame? Kanye clearly, but also Roc-A-Fella Records, Universal Music Group,
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the entire music industry, and how the market functions in general.
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Record labels have a goal of trying to get their artists to stick out of the crowd in an oversaturated
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media landscape. For decades they have been making sexualized, shocking, violent media products.
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More and more we see the industry cynically relying on sensationalism and glamorization of
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violence against women in order to boost sales.
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I'm not gonna get into a shot by shot analysis of the video and the imagery used,
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in fact I'm not even gonna show it.
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This shouldn't have to be said and sadly it does need to be said.
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This is misogyny.
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And that should make us all rightfully angry.
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And perhaps this would be a good time to define misogyny because there seems to be some confusion
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about the word in relation to Kanye's video.
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First, when we talk about women, we mean full and complete human beings
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and all that that entails.
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Misogyny as defined by the Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology, "is a cultural attitude of hatred
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for females simply because they are female. It is a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and,
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as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies.
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Misogyny is manifested in many different ways from jokes to pornography to violence
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to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies."
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Again, misogyny can take many forms both subtle and obvious.
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This video is an example of misogyny at its most obvious which Kanye excuses by saying
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it was a way to generate "controversy and sales".
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Like Samhita in her Feministing article, "If he really wanted to take the scene by storm, he should
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treat women like human beings, that'll shock 'em".
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Monster not only reduces women to sexual objects and perpetuates racist stereotypes but
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it actually fetishizes the aspects of women that don't even require us to be physically alive.
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I think that bares repeating, this video fetishizes the aspects of women
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that don't even require us to be physically alive.
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♫ "...got the lowest self esteem, the prettiest people do the ugliest things for the road to riches and diamond rings."
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