Words cannot express my feelings for the Chris Brown/Rihanna incident last year, and maybe I will be able to express them at a later date (let’s just say simply put, Brown was given cheap grace by the black community–I had one too facebook responses to my anti-domestic violence statuses during that time saying we should forgive first. Um, whatever happened to repentance).
Katie Grimes first wrote A Double Standard for women and violence in the media; my comments in that post, when comparing Rihanna to the likes of Martina McBride, I find differences according to race and nationality. The American flag does not appear at all in “Man Down” yet featured in McBride’s Independence Day”– the theme song for Sean Hannity’s radio show.
Oh, and that vengeance thing, while ambiguously considered by Rihanna, is definitely glorified in McBride’s hit.
Secondly, Tim McGee wrote with great detail how the culture of rape takes away the subjectivity of women, i.e., keeps in into a gridlock of social death in his The Political Contours of Rihanna’s “Man Down”: Pulling the Trigger on Rape Culture.
UPDATE: Tim has added a second reflection, The Theological Contours of Rihanna’s “Man Down”: Pulling the trigger on rape culture
I hope you all will take a look at both posts. Highly recommended
Related articles
- A Double-Standard for Women and Violence In the Media? (witheology.wordpress.com)
