Loaded Guns, Loaded Metaphors: Rihanna’s “Man Down” Video

Loaded Guns, Loaded Metaphors: 

Rihanna’s “Man Down” Video

by Janell Hobson | Ms. Magazine

Rihanna has a genius for controversy. As soon as the music video for her latest single, “Man Down,” premiered this week on BET’s 106 & Park, it created an instant backlash from various groups demanding it be banned from television. However, the outcry is not about depictions of S&M fantasies or a same-sex kiss or even passive acceptance of domestic violence. This time, she is being condemned for promoting murder.

I have to wonder if I’ve seen the same video.

I see a revenge story by a rape survivor, who makes it clear that, no matter what a woman wears or how she dances or if she walks alone at night, rape is wrong and deserves punishment. Rihanna reiterated this message when she broadcast on Twitter:

Young girls/women all over the world … we are a lot of things! We’re strong innocent fun flirtatious vulnerable, and sometimes our innocence can cause us to be naïve! We always think it could NEVER be us, but in reality, it can happen to ANY of us! So ladies be careful and #listentoyomama! I love you and I care!

While I understand the moral concerns about popular messages that condone violence, the hue and cry over this video seem to reflect a deeper anxiety. After all, if parental groups worry that pop stars such as Rihanna are encouraging young women to seek violent retribution, then I wish they would also condemn blockbuster action movies, video games and comic books that preach the same message to young boys. 

Or is it perfectly okay for action figures like Thor or Batman or a regular American G.I. to seek justice through violent means? And what does it mean for the larger public to loudly condemn a fictional scene of a rape victim grabbing her gun and pulling the trigger on her perpetrator, especially when other violent representations in media are not condemned but championed?

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Magazine

Am I The Only Feminist Who Liked Perry’s “For Colored Girls”?

Am I The Only Feminist Who Liked Perry’s “For Colored Girls”?
by Janell Hobson

I doubt that I am, and judging from the mostly black female audience that filled the theater where I watched Tyler Perry’s film adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s celebrated “choreopoem,” I believe the word-of-mouth among black women is that Perry got more things right than wrong in presenting the classic narrative on black women’s blues.

Other Ms. reviewers, such as Mako Fitts and Linda Villarosa, point out some crucial problems with Perry’s take–from homophobia to a conservative dismissal of positive black female sexuality to a simplistic portrayal of black men. Over at The Root, Salamisha Tillet argues that Perry severely undermines black feminism through his negative portrayal of Janet Jackson’s character, Jo, a black professional woman.

I can’t help but wonder, though, at the chorus of critics not previously invested in black feminist issues who gave the film overwhelming negative reviews. From Roger Ebert to the early reviews offered in Variety and Hollywood Reporter to Courtland Milloy who wishes to speak “for black men who have considered homicide” after watching the movie, reviewers have condemned the film as “cluttered,” “man-hating” and a “train wreck.”

What none of the critics–feminist or otherwise–pointed out was the transformation that occurred when Perry grounded the abstract poetry of Shange in cinematic realism. On-stage monologues about secret abortions and abuse allow us to go with our imaginations and feel the poems, but seeing these scenes through candid film shots was downright traumatizing. Whatever art and lyricism are conveyed in poetry, there is nothing like the gritty reality of the motion picture. While Shange’s words offer great humor and great pain, along with rainbows and rhythmic movements in jazz and salsa, Perry’s adaptation goes a step further by transporting the dance and the words into concrete scenarios played by concrete characters with names, addresses, relatives, partners and careers.

Read the the Full Essay @ Ms. Blog

Who’s Afraid of the Single Black Woman?

Who’s Afraid of the Single Black Woman?
by Janell Hobson

It was during one of those rainy Sunday afternoons–what I call my solitude time in the comfort of my home–that I discovered William Wyler’s 1949 movie The Heiress on TCM. I surf through my cable channels oh so delicately, lest I see another image berating my existence as a black woman. Movies of old rarely knew we existed, or thought we did so only as maids.

In this movie, there were no black characters–only a shy “plain Jane” heroine, Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland), who bears the condescension of her father and suffers heartbreak after her fiancé, Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), deserts her when he learns that she will no longer inherit an immense fortune. Eventually, she does inherit this fortune, but when the lowlife Morris predictably returns, Catherine rejects him, much to the chagrin of her aunt, who thinks a loser husband is preferable to none at all.

Needless to say, as a single black woman in my 30s who is quite comfortable with her single status–and I am not the only one, despite what family, church, community, media and the rest of society has to say–I was exhilarated when Catherine bolted the door on Morris and nobly ascended the staircase, the lamp she held leading her to new found self-awareness and independence. We have yet to see duplicated in contemporary films women of any color making such bold choices in rejecting a man without replacing him first (gasp!). I was not that surprised, then, when I went online in search of commentary and criticism on this classic film, to discover present-day audiences lamenting that Catherine would forego marrying a man, no matter how worthless he was, for an unknown and perhaps unmarried future.

I would like to think that this is a sentiment shared only by a few members of our society who are invested in traditional notions of gender and marriage. Yet I find countless blog posts and commentaries lamenting the state of single women–black women in particular. Offline, this anxiety, or what Danielle Belton of The Black Snob blog calls “marriage panic,” reverberates in CNN special reports, in Essence magazine, from church pulpits, and at black public forums. Then there’s Helena Andrew’s recent memoir, Bitch is the New Black, which is being marketed as a black Sex and the City,” focusing on the endless woes of a single black woman.

Except we have been down this road before: Think Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale back in the 90s. While The Heiress is set in the nineteenth century, I can’t help but think our contemporary “marriage panic” is grounded in similar Victorian concerns; it’s all so nuclear-family-oriented, so pre-sexual revolution. In a time when queer communities are fighting for same-sex marriage rights, black heterosexuals are wringing their hands over the presumed inability to access basic heterosexual marriage rights.

Again, this is not surprising considering how, historically, one of the first things freed slaves did–having suffered the pain of being separated from partners, children and relatives–was to marry and establish themselves as legitimate citizens. That queer communities are fighting for the same “legitimacy” today means that we as feminists should scrutinize how all those marginalized in society are shut out from marriage and the social, political and economic benefits that come with it.

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Magazine