![]() However, as colonial history shows, the violence ascribed to non-white women has long been deployed firstly, to construct a particular kind of white femaleness – one marked by innocence, vulnerability, and thus desireability. Remember Kipling’s Afghan women who came out to torture the poor white soldier boy? Or innumerable references to Native American women in Western novels whose ability to torture outshone that of the men? Or the long racist history of violent tendencies attributed to African and African American women? There is a long and multifaceted racist and imperialist tradition of writing women of colour as capable of unimaginable violence against white bodies. Moreover the video emphasises another familiar trope: the apparently inherent ‘violence’ long ascribed to women of colour. ![]() Perhaps this individualised subversion (and reversal) of historical structural racialized and gendered violence is why BBHMM has upset so many (primarily white) commentators? It is necessary to remember, once again, that the terror of people of colour turning deliberately violent against white people has a long historical trajectory in imperial and racist imaginary. The individualisation of that structural violence suffered – historically and in contemporary reality – through wars, economics, legal structures, and even narrative representations by women of colour, and complicity of white women in this violence – in part what gives the video its power. Right to its end, BBHMM replicates but subverts historical tropes of interaction between white and non-white women while also individualising structural violence. Think of Miley Cyrus, Daenerys Targaryen, and pretty much most film, music video, television programming.Īt this point, the girlfriend is kidnapped, stuffed in a trunk and taken away for torture and eventual drowning by Rihanna and her hench-women. ![]() The sequence is also a nod to the many, many screen representations of an affluent white woman – often clad in white and with blonde hair to further emphasise whiteness – whose attractions are highlighted by contrasting her to ‘lesser’ non-white female bodies that surround her but remain in the background. It also highlights a long history of women of colour serving and enabling the exaltation of white femininity, with their service – coerced and enforced – as slaves, maids, ayahs, nurses, and cleaners rarely recognised. This is a moment of on-screen acknowledgement of the historical erasure of women of colour by white women who – as a group – have benefitted from both white supremacy and colonialism. On entering the lift, the girlfriend does not even register the woman of colour at the back. The first interaction between Rihanna and the girlfriend is fleeting but employs a key trope. In doing so, BBHMM becomes probably one of the most sophisticated pop culture takes on the complexity of how white and non-white women interact, in equal parts warning, nightmare, catharsis, and horror. BBHMM is different from most videos in that the violence is perpetrated BY women and with Rihanna in the lead, specifically by women of colour. Indeed, it isn’t the violence itself that is disturbing but who perpetrates it, and the larger context of what kind of violence (and perpetrator) is deemed acceptable. It is also shot in a way that is less fetishist than most current filmed violence. While much is being said about BBHMM’s violence – especially the torture sequence – but it is hardly any more so than most videos, films, and even mainstream news reports. As a committed feminist and film scholar, I am particularly sensitive to the ‘Women in Refrigerators’ trope in films, games, comics, and books where violence against women is used as a plot device ( Game of Thrones, I am looking at you!) so I must also note that BBHMM is far more complex, and more provocative for being so. But I am an observer and analyst of pop culture, so here go some initial thoughts.įirst off the bat, yes, the video is disturbing for the violence against women. By Sunny Singh Follow this morning I got around to watching Rihanna’s Bitch Better Have My Money (full disclosure: I am not a fan, have never been.
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