I Know What Rape Really Looks Like; How Can the Media Glamorize It?

By Charlotte Hilton Andersen, Huffington Post. Posted June 17, 2009.

I shouldn't have to explain this to you.

And yet I feel compelled to because thanks to examples ranging from the mostly innocuous Edward "Do I kiss you or kill you?" Cullen in Twilight, to the twisted media coverage of the Chris Brown-Rihanna debacle to the galling rape-fantasty video game genre, the media is selling us an image of rape and domestic violence as being artistic, dramatic, the result of misguided love and -- most terrifying -- wanted.

The latest incarnation of this is Lady Gaga's new art flick/music video for her single "Paparazzi." (I have no desire to post it here but if you're curious, YouTube has the full vid.) In this slickly designed and beautifully executed film short -- the costumes! the scenery! the sets! the glorious backup dancers!! -- Lady Gaga (playing herself, per her usual) is used and abused by her lover who eventually throws her over a balcony. The fall doesn't kill her but rather maims her. So far, so much another tragic romance but Lady G then uses this opportunity to break out the bedazzled neck brace, gold encrusted crutches and -- most fabulously -- a Louis Vitton wheelchair with Chanel embellished wheels. Her fame skyrockets as the sympathetic public lauds her escape with their money. Interspersed between shots are quick flashes of women not as lucky as Lady Gaga -- women with bullet holes in their foreheads or blood trickling out of their mouths, all obviously dead. In the end, not only does she turn the tables on her model man, but she kills him, an ending that I'm guessing is supposed to make us feel that justice has been served.

And yet I found the whole thing so repulsive I couldn't even finish watching the video despite "Paparazzi" being my favorite song of hers and despite having seen her in concert and loved it. I had to read about the ending on a spoiler site. Sure some will say it is an overwrought satire or mere frothy fun meant to be empowering if anything but the images of dead women -- only young, beautiful ones of course -- used in such a manner strikes me as well, commercial. It has also been suggested that being a woman, Lady Gaga be given a pass. Of course this would be offensive if a man made it, the reasoning goes, but because a woman did it it shows that she's facing one of female kind's greatest fears and vulnerabilities. I say she's capitalizing on them.

I've been accused in the past of being overly sensitive to these issues because of my own history but in a country where 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime and where Jamie Leigh Jones has to sue for the right to sue the men who raped her so badly that she's permanently scarred -- shouldn't we all be overly sensitive to these issues? Or at the very least, not treat rape like a party trick that one bounds back from in gilded couture?

See more stories tagged with: media, rape, abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, gang rape, rihanna, chris brown, lady gaga

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