Two years ago Tuesday, Rihanna cancelled her scheduled performance at the Grammys. The domestic abuse case that surfaced soon after that marked an indelible career turning point for her and for Chris Brown, her then-boyfriend and assailant. They had been two of the biggest pop stars in the world; from that point forward, they would always be, at least to some, a victim and a monster.
It was a case of sex and violence ““ those twin sources of visceral intrigue ““ and one of the most interesting questions was how Rihanna and Brown would broach those topics when they made their inevitable returns to music.
Rihanna spoke first, releasing “Rated R” in November 2009, and it was the perfect response to a delicate situation.
In a few songs, she declared her dominance as the strongest female figure in pop music, and in the rest, she tackled love and sex from every angle.
She admitted to being “Stupid In Love,” compared the dangers of deep attraction to a “Fire Bomb,” studied wistfully the “Photographs” of a former lover. And in “Rude Boy,” she asserted her right to be raunchy and playful in the wake of the scandal; within one album she both dealt with the incident and moved on from it.
Brown, meanwhile, with the deck already stacked impossibly against him, played the worst card in his hand. He released “Graffiti” in December of that year, a terrible collection of songs that contained wildly inappropriate boasts and not a hint of genuine contrition. Brown tried to reclaim sex for himself, not realizing that he had forfeited any such rights, perhaps permanently.
What must he think, then, of Rihanna’s new music video? Last week, she released one for “S&M,” the fourth single from her November 2010 album, “Loud,” and it is either the culmination of her entire career or a strange and troubling misstep. I hope it’s the latter.
She spends some of “S&M” pinned to a wall behind a sheet of plastic, some of it tied like a hostage and dressed like a child. She whips Perez Hilton as she leads him on a leash, and mimics fellatio with several different foods.
If there’s a point to all this perversion, it’s that people demonize her for enjoying rougher-than-normal sexual activities.
Rihanna is in an unusual position here, though; that domestic abuse case should not define the rest of her career, but it is still unavoidable that any comment she makes about violence, even if it’s consensual, will recall memories of that incident.
Rihanna seems aware of this, too, when she sings, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me.”
With “S&M” she has taken her sexual aggression so far that she can reference her turn-ons and her trauma in the same line. That could have been a fascinating idea to investigate, but this video, with its bright colors and shock-value images, is nothing more than a farce.
Rihanna may be parodying herself now, but she’s already helped set in motion a new phase of women’s empowerment in pop music. A few years ago, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls were the norm, groups of anonymous sex objects selling themselves as much as their music.
Now a growing number of female artists are creating hyper-sexualized personas from a position of dominance, like Jessie J, Nicki Minaj’s British imitator, who most notably gave this entire trend a thesis statement with her single “Do It Like A Dude.”
A lot of people are uncomfortable with this brand of feminism, and I’m not sure the stars themselves are entirely sure yet of the territory they’re navigating.
These are relatively uncharted waters; after all these years of supposed gender equality, we’re still not used to seeing women flaunt their sexual conquests the way male pop stars do all the time.
Rihanna should be leading this movement.
The brilliance of “Rated R” was how sneakily it made its statement; without sticking a single banana in her mouth, with not a hint of child pornography, she made her boldness and her sexuality abundantly clear. If she can surprise us like that again, we’ll be in good shape.
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If you see a new brand of feminism emerging in pop music, e-mail Goodman at agoodman@media.ucla.edu._