The video that accompanies Te Amo, the latest song from R ’n’ B megastar Rihanna, is in many respects an unremarkable effort. It’s rammed with your standard pop shorthand for decadent, intense, dangerous-yet-picturesque passion.
Scene one: a mindlessly sexy love interest drives a vintage car up the gravel path of a grand and ghostly house. Rihanna waits within, clad only in a leotard, lace gloves and ankle boots. She writhes around a bit in frenzied anticipation. Scene two: love interest enters the room in which Rihanna writhes and approaches the singer — slinkily and with purpose. They dance together erotically, never quite touching. Scene three: the couple cavort in silhouette; Rihanna plays the dominatrix, sings the song’s chorus into her lover’s ear, drags a dark-painted fingernail along the length of her lover’s jaw. So far, so predictable — apart from the fact that Rihanna’s love interest is played by Laetitia Casta, a 32-year-old French supermodel turned actress.
“Then she said ‘Te amo.’ Then she put her hand around my waist ...
“I said ‘Te amo, wish somebody’d tell me what she said,’ Don’t it mean ‘I love you’?’” run the lyrics, which Rihanna sings over a loaded, sinister and sexy beat. YouTube was registering 9,125,000 previous views by the time I got to it — and, well, you can quite imagine why.
The summer of 2010 has been monopolized by videos just like this. Glossily hedonistic, hyper-sexualized, controversy-embracing, arch and incorporating at least one visual reference to sadomasochism. Furthermore, they’ve all been the work of extremely high-profile female artists. In early June, Katy Perry shot streams of whipped cream from a red sequin bra and gyrated on a candy floss cloud for her number one song, California Gurls. A week later, Beyonce wore a basque, flexed a whip, smoked a cigarette and subverted the cliched ideal of the compliant 1950s housewife in the video for Why Don’t You Love Me? Last month, Christina Aguilera wore designer fetish gear and reprised the pseudo-sapphic theme with one of her dancers in the video for Not Myself Tonight. And that’s just for starters.
Of course, pop music has always been sexually charged: that’s half its point. Pop videos have always reflected this, ramping up the sexual aspect of songs: that’s their entire point. But still, what we are witnessing here is a very specific set of visuals and notions, which encompass a series of recurring themes (lesbianism, whips, retro-hairstyles and extremely high-end fashion), and which mark a shift in culture.
Where did it come from? Lady Gaga, obviously. That unrelenting, ubiquitous, all-singing, all-piano-playing, unapologetic, bleached blonde spectacular of a pop concept. Gaga (as she’s popularly known) only entered the public consciousness 18 months ago when she released her first single, Just Dance, but she has come to inform and alter it profoundly. Those videos, those themes, that subversive sexiness, is very much her shtick.
Not everyone thinks her reach is a good thing, mind. “Gaga has launched every single woman in pop music into this crazy personality crisis,” the male pop star Mika announced on Tuesday. “I don’t think men have felt it, I think it’s a female thing. I’m looking forward to seeing what else is out there.” This, a week after record producer Mike Stock (previously of Stock, Aitken and Waterman) pronounced contemporary music videos “99 percent R ’n’ B, 99 percent of which is soft pornography.” “You can’t watch a Lady Gaga video with a two-year-old,” he added.
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