When I first watched Rihanna’s repulsive new video for her repulsive single, B***h Better Have My Money, it had only had a couple of million views. It was last Wednesday, in fact, shortly after Nick Grimshaw had mentioned it on his Radio 1 Breakfast Show. Even Grimshaw seemed a little bit shocked — and he’s not exactly a prude. It had made him feel ‘proper’ sick, he said. Hmm, I thought to myself. Better check this one out

This video contains, in no particular order, extreme violence, torture, drug-taking, guns, negative racial stereotyping (towards both black and white), sexual exploitation and murder. Actually, sorry: not just contains, but also glorifies and justifies.

Actually, sorry: not just contains, but also glorifies and justifies. After all, the man stole her money. What else is a poor girl to do?

Now I wonder, are you familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, the 1971 film based on Anthony Burgess’s 1962 dystopian novella? For its time, it was a hugely culturally significant piece of cinema. It seemed to encapsulate what many thought was the breakdown of civilised society taking place within the wider world. It contained an unprecedented level of violence, which was linked to a number of so-called copycat cases. Eventually, Kubrick himself withdrew the film. The sadistic brutality of Malcolm McDowell, darkly psychotic in the lead role of Alex, is at the heart of what makes the film so viscerally shocking. The sheer nastiness of it is almost unbearable, from coffee tables shaped as naked women on all-fours, to the twisted clownishness of the infamous rape scene. What’s so frightening about it is the fact that Alex and his henchmen, his ‘Droogs’, are not so much immoral as amoral, wholly lacking in any kind of empathy or humanity — and as such no longer really human at all. A Clockwork Orange was one of the first things that came to mind when I saw the video for B***h Better Have My Money. All the elements — amorality, inhumanity, violence and depravity as a hobby — are there, only with nudity and more designer clothes

At least, though, Kubrick agonised over his creation. He understood the implications of the world he had represented so effectively in art. He felt some sort of responsibility for the film, and for subsequent criminal actions that apparently arose from it. Rihanna, quite clearly, thinks it’s all some huge joke. What’s more, the Alex character is ultimately punished for his crimes.

Half a century on, and Rihanna, by contrast, is rewarded for hers. Not just in the video, but in real life. She is a global superstar adored by millions. So crime, according to what passes for the narrative of this video, does pay after all. Because what other conclusion can we possibly draw? Certainly, if one happens to be an impressionable young person, who perhaps hasn’t quite understood the difference between right and wrong, the message would seem clear: if people don’t give you exactly what you want, then you’re perfectly within your rights to go on a drug-fuelled killing spree. These are the sentiments that, in 2015, are deemed acceptable themes through which to promote a pop song to 12-year-olds.

Rihanna doesn’t have children. But I really hope that one day she does. Because perhaps then she will understand what it feels like, as a mother, to live in fear and helplessness.

i bet some of them don't even have kid, i mean what parents really spend their time seething over a celebrity

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YASSS SEETHE

Rihanna doesn’t have children. But I really hope that one day she does. Because perhaps then she will understand what it feels like, as a mother, to live in fear and helplessness.

I don't wanna live on this planet anymore

But the only reason this is happening is because she's a woman

Imagine a man doing this video, you don't even have to imagine cause that's been done a 1000 times, then no mom will care, they will at the very worst be upset but let it go cause their daughters won't watch it anyway and 'boys will be boys'

Rih is a woman, therefore she needs to be a rolemodel to little girls, therefore anything 'out of line for a woman' is unacceptable

Originally posted by St. Charles Wait, what the hell?

Originally posted by Cain But the only reason this is happening is because she's a woman Imagine a man doing this video, you don't even have to imagine cause that's been done a 1000 times, then no mom will care, they will at the very worst be upset but let it go cause their daughters won't watch it anyway and 'boys will be boys' Rih is a woman, therefore she needs to be a rolemodel to little girls, therefore anything 'out of line for a woman' is unacceptable