We’re late to the conversation about Rihanna’s Bitch Better Have My Money video.
If you’ve read any of the posts we’ve written about Rihanna on this blog you know we have nothing but admiration for her. We love her confidence. We’re inspired by her attitude of disregard for what anybody has to say about anything she does.
Her attitude always reminds us that our opinion really doesn’t matter and we should spend our time worrying about our own lives.
Rihanna is all set. She’s got no worries. She’s Rihanna.
We, on the other hand…
So we weren’t gong to discuss the Bitch Better Have My Money music video
The reason we weren’t (and still won’t) discuss the Bitch Better Have My Money video is because we wanted/want to support freedom in art. And the best way we could do that was by resisting the impulse to react to the video as if Rihanna is trying to glamorize violence and in so doing, playing a hand in corrupting society. It’s just a music video–just art. Like a movie is just art. And we are certainly not the arbiters of what is acceptable to be depicted in art. We think people should be free to create whatever they want to create as long as they aren’t breaking the law. We don’t have to like what they create. We don’t have to agree with it. But we have no call to try to interfere with their right to create it just because it’s something we personally find inappropriate.
So while we didn’t like to see to see imagery of a woman being kidnapped (by other women), bound, gagged and thrown in the backseat of a car, we decided there was no need to get all outraged and start talking about how Rihanna was sending out a bad message to young girls. All Rihanna is doing is entertaining her fans. She’s acting out a song. She’s not trying to tell anybody that it’s okay to murder someone if that person doesn’t pay you money they owe you. Yes, the sight of Rihanna drenched in the blood of the bitch accountant she presumably murders when all else fails in her efforts to get her money, left us speechless. But you know what, we were left speechless because we think too damn much. Does everything really need to be over-analyzed? You don’t love the video, just shrug and move on. We didn’t love the video. So we shrugged and moved on.
But the song is catchy though. Too catchy. We had to listen to an hour long meditation tape so we could stop silently singing over and over in our heads “Bitch better have my money”.