This week, it was announced that Kanye West’s star studded “Monster” video had been banned from MTV or rather serious edits requested. Among the posts, blogs etc. talking about MTV’s demands, what many fail to realize is that this is being analyzed among the wrong lines. Instead of analyzing this among the lines that “Wow, that video was racy” what many should do is analiyze it among the lines of “Wow, that video was racy, but MTV has aired WORSE.”
First and foremost in order for many to see the weight of this ban, I would like to take them back to a video that premiered the summer of 2010. In this video, you have the same half dead Louboutin wearing white girls, with the beat faces and couture dresses, hanging from ceilings and draped against garden fountains. Yes, I’m talking Lady Gaga’s Papparrazi. In Lady Gaga’s papparrazi video, it opens up with Gaga having dry sex with some European male moaning words like “Pus, Pus” that sound TOO CLOSE to pussy. In the next clip, they’re making out so passionately and it’s so cute and fun until he pushes her off the balcony. In the minutes, seconds and clips that follow between and betwixt scenes of Lady Gaga making out with these rocker drags or girls or maybe even guys who didn’t fully make it through puberty, images of beautiful slaughtered women grace your screen.
If you take Lady Gaga’s “Papparrazi” and Kanye West’s “Monster” watch them at the same time muted. Remove Nicki’s fat ass, Jay-Z’s camel face and Rick Ross’s man tits you basically have the same video. Why then, was one banned or rather told to do some serious editing, while the other went on to be an MTV favorite? I don’t want to pull the black card, but I’m really itching too.
“The mainstreaming of videos like this increases desensitized and callous attitudes toward violence against women…Women are reduced to sex-doll like playthings. So great is the level of desensitization that the barbaric treatment of women and girls is seen as normal and to be expected. We decided to run this campaign because we wanted to challenge the status quo, ” said Melinda Tankard Reist one of the activist behind that ban.
Here’s the thing: when you let one video run that has dead white girls wearing Louboutins, and then ban another video from running that has the same dead white girls wearing Louboutins, and it just so happens that one of the artists involved is Black and the other one is white, you’re playing with fire and literally asking for the black card to get pulled. It no longer has anything to do with feminism or violence because it obviously wasn’t that big of deal when you let Lady Gaga’s video pass.
