The student media organization of California State University Northridge

Daily Sundial

The student media organization of California State University Northridge

Daily Sundial

The student media organization of California State University Northridge

Daily Sundial

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Review: Rihanna’s music video for #BBHMM – thought-provoking, necessary

Rihanna in #BBHMM (via video on VEVO.com). Photo credit: Thomas Gallegos
Rihanna in #BBHMM (via video on VEVO.com). Photo credit: Thomas Gallegos

With the music video release of Rihanna’s single titled, “#BBHMM,” from her upcoming eighth studio album, the Grammy Award-winning Barbados native put accountants within the music industry on notice, play nice or get diced.

But besides the very basic premise that the video was simply a sexualized and violently captivating series of events, which includes torture and the eventual mutilation of a very perverse individual, a deeper dive into the song titled, “Bitch Better Have My Money,” is worth discussing.

The video follows a series of events in which Rihanna and her band of henchwomen take hostage, frisk and harass, then ultimately kill a mischievous accountant and his ‘stepford wife’ of a companion.

Opponents of the video have taken to social media to discuss their outrage for Rihanna’s revenge enforcement and use of risky images, begrudged to see the need or importance for a white woman being the main target of torture and abuse.

The use of the accountants wife, a white women, being abused within Rihanna’s music video is needed and one that holds deeper necessity following the outcome of the video.

Rihanna has taken the idea of men perceiving women as items or objects, something men within the entertainment industry and society as a whole have done repeatedly through history.

Rihanna’s use of this symbolism helps construct a story that illustrates a reflective reality, in which the slimy accountant’s own womanizing item idealization of his wife and women, as a whole, is obvious.

Rihanna is able to show the accountants own inability to see his wife as more than just an item, specifically when she’s being captured and tortured, which evidently wasn’t enough to dismantle his spending spree or captivate him into a frenzy to save her from sure doom.

Many believe Rihanna’s use of violent abuse against the wife of the accountant within the video is too risky and steps over bounds, which has now separated some ‘white and black feminists.’

Mia McKenzie in her review of #BBHMM on BlackGirlDangerous.org, makes a great point when explaining a very real ideal within the video. “Rihanna flips the script: if a white women has to suffer some so that she, a black women, can survive, so be it. After all, white women have been surviving on our suffering for hundreds of years.”

That is an incredibly valid and necessary point when discussing the video for #BBHMM and the inability for some viewers to see the importance of these symbols only demonstrates their ignorance toward understanding.

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