Rihanna is defending her latest music video, which opens with a man being shot in the head.
Man Down, which premiered Tuesday last week on BET, is a song about a girl who shoots her lover in public. The video also portrays sexual assault.
On Tuesday, the Parents Television Council called the clip “disturbing” and asked BET to stop airing it.
Photo: Reuters
But on Thursday’s 106 & Park, BET’s music video countdown show, Rihanna said the video is “art with a message.” “We just wanted to hone in on a very serious matter that people are afraid to address, especially if you’ve been victimized in this scenario,” Rihanna said.
BET says it will continue to play the video, explaining that the network “has a comprehensive set of standards and guidelines that are applied to all of our content” and that Rihanna’s video “complied with these guidelines and was approved for air.” MTV hasn’t played the video yet. An MTV representative said the station was “in the process of reviewing the video.” Rihanna, who was attacked by then-boyfriend Chris Brown in February 2009, says she doesn’t agree with violence.
Brown attacked Rihanna on the eve of the Grammys two years ago. He pleaded guilty to a felony and was sentenced to five years’ probation.
“I’ve been abused in the past and you don’t see me running around killing people in my spare time,” she said.
But the 23-year-old says rape happens too often and those victims need a voice.
“If I can be a voice for so many that aren’t heard, then I win twice,” she said.
The Man Down clip was directed by Anthony Mandler, who has directed other Rihanna videos.
The Grammy winner says she didn’t intend to make a controversial music video. She was hoping to display her acting skills and create “something raw and artistic.”
Violence isn’t just for music videos. A West Point cadet is suing veteran R ’n’ B diva Patti LaBelle, saying she ordered her bodyguards to beat him up as he waited for a ride home outside a Houston airport terminal.
The lawsuit alleges the cadet, Richard King, was waiting for his brother and father to pick him up outside one of the terminals at Bush Intercontinental Airport on March 11, when three of LaBelle’s bodyguards attacked him. King was in Houston, his hometown, while on spring break from West Point.
“Apparently, defendant LaBelle believed King was standing too close to her [no doubt expensive] luggage, even though he was oblivious to her presence and the danger he was in,” according to King’s lawsuit, which was filed in Houston civil court on Wednesday and also names the bodyguards, the airport and a taxi dispatcher as co-defendants. “LaBelle lowered the window of her limousine and gave a command to her bodyguards. They sprang into action.”
One of King’s lawyers, John Raley, said the alleged attacked resulted in a concussion and lingering dizziness and headaches for his client. The lawyer said King, who played defensive back for Army, was told by his doctors he can never play football again because of his injuries. The lawsuit is asking for unspecified damages.
A surveillance video from the airport provided by King’s lawyer showed King, 23, talking on a cellphone when one of LaBelle’s bodyguards appeared to push up against him. It appeared that King then pushed him back. Raley said King did not push back but was only trying to protect himself from a punch.
After that, the bodyguard and two other individuals then pushed and punched King, hitting him in the face and knocking him to the ground.
In the video, the bodyguards could be seen towering over King and then moving away when King unsuccessfully tried several times to get up off the ground. Police eventually came over and helped King. The video then cuts to King, who has a bandage on his head and blood on his yellow sweater, being placed on an ambulance stretcher. The video ends with two Houston police officers taking photos with LaBelle.
LaBelle “was a full participant in the cruel attack on King,” the lawsuit said. “She ordered it, and never tried to stop it.”
One of the individuals involved in the incident, Zuri Edwards, told police King hit him after he asked the cadet to back away from the limousine that LaBelle was in, said Kese Smith, a Houston police spokesman.
Edwards, who said he was the limo driver, and a bodyguard both told police King appeared to be intoxicated, Smith said. The police report named King as the suspect in the incident.
Raley said King had a few drinks on the flight to Houston but denied he was intoxicated.
On a tragic note, a teenage girl who got a heart transplant thanks to a fund-raising campaign by singer/actress Brandy has died less than four months after surgery.
Jessica Harris, 17, who lived in the same town of McComb, Mississippi, where Brandy was raised, died at a New York hospital on Thursday, Brandy said.
The star of reality TV shows Dancing With the Stars and Brandy and Ray J: A Family Business met Harris last year and with her family began a campaign to raise funds for surgery to correct her congenital heart defect.
Harris received the transplant in late February.
“Jessica was and will always be an inspiration to our family. In the face of her illness, her courageous spirit and positive outlook gave us memories we will cherish for a lifetime,” the singer and her family said in a statement on Friday.
“We were touched by the outpouring of generosity from the public when we set up a fund on her behalf to help cover her medical and travel expenses,” the statement added.
Brandy thanked those who donated to the fund and the hospital that carried out the heart transplant — the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in New York.
Harris suffered from hypoplastic left heart syndrome, and was denied medical insurance through her father’s job because she was deemed to be suffering from a pre-existing condition.
Meanwhile in Europe, being John Malkovich proved to be rather less fun than the comedy movie of the same name on Friday after the American actor found out his Prague hotel room had been burgled.
“We can confirm than an investigation is under way in the case of the disappearance of Mr Malkovich’s personal belongings,” said a spokeswoman for the Mandarin Oriental hotel.
Malkovich, 57, performed in the murder melodrama Infernal Comedy, based on a real Austrian serial killer, at the Prague Spring music festival on Thursday, and was due to fly to Poland on Friday. News Web site www.idnes.cz quoted the festival’s director as saying the thief took two mobile phones.
Speaking of Americans crossing the Atlantic, Hugh Hefner opened a new Playboy club in London’s swanky Mayfair district on Saturday after an absence of 30 years, and the imminent return of the “bunny girls” has some feminist groups and commentators hopping mad.
The 85-year-old entrepreneur was in London to launch the new venue, where life membership costs ￡15,000 (US$25,000) and a single “Sazerac” cocktail will set a member back a cool ￡2,000.
He was greeted with a mixed welcome at the plush club at its official launch, with more than 100 feminist protesters making their objections felt under the banner “Eff Off Hefner!”
Inside, young women dressed in the famous Playboy rabbit ears, collars, cuffs and skimpy corsets offered him and his guests champagne and dealt cards at the gambling tables that are the key economic ingredient to the venture.
The London Playboy club closed in 1981 after its gaming license was revoked, although by then the A-list glamour had faded and the venues were on the decline around the globe.
After a long hiatus, Hefner re-launched the concept in Las Vegas in 2006, although he said he did not expect to return to the days when Playboy had 30 clubs in the US alone.
The Playboy brand, however, had made a comeback, he argued.
“There is a great appeal for that retro-chic quality I think,” he said. “There’s a feeling for a lot of people that it was maybe the party they missed, they want to go back there, with the Beatles and the Rat Pack and the bunnies.”
For some commentators and activists, the party should remain in the past. Kat Banyard of UK Feminista said Hefner’s empire had “laid the groundwork for the sex industry as we know it today ... which relentlessly exploits and degrades women. The Playboy Club represents a step back in time to a place where women were treated as sexual objects to serve, titillate and decorate in a world where men are all-powerful.”
Commentator Ruth Wishart wrote in the Scotland’s Herald newspaper: “’A sanctuary for masculinity,’ gushes an alleged branding guru. Or a warren of retro-sleaze if you’re a vaguely sentient citizen of the 21st century.”
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