Rihanna’s
nipples.
The endless coitus of capitalism
Jon
E. Illescas *
A
part of a frame of Rihanna’s music video “Kiss It Better”
(2016).
Rihanna
is the absolute queen of mainstream music video. If we analyze the
most watched music videos on YouTube in its first decade of
existence, in no less than 26 videos the singer celebrity appears.1
The world’s most famous Barbadian backed by ex-pusher, rapper and
millionaire mogul, Jay-Z, beats other pop stars such as Justin
Bieber, Katy Perry or Shakira. However, the singer has another
milestone. In 2015 she appeared topless in her video “Bitch Better
Have My Money”. It was the very first time a pop queen made a
topless in a mainstream music video. The black Madonna of 21st
century surpassed the outdated white Madonna.2
Since that “groundbreaking moment”, Rihanna hasn’t stopped in
her willingness to show us her nipples in each and every new video.
So far, we have four.3
That
is because after the quoted music video she went on with her
seduction strategy. She did it again in “Work”, “Kiss It
Better” and “Needed Me”. In all of them, the celebrity decided
to show her formerly private areolas to young people around the
world.4
Exaggerated? These four music videos have had more than 1.170 million
views in less than two years. This audience is approximately the same
as nine times the combined young population in the European Union and
the United States of America or, put another way, the whole
population of EU, USA and Russia.5
This isn’t nonsense, is it? But anyway, what’s the reason for
Rihanna’s apparent obsession with her breasts?
Actually,
it isn´t about the singer’s will, although at the end she has to
give her consent (of course!). It’s about the mode of production
that sets the logic which in turn determines the form and the content
of mainstream music videos: capitalism. In
this system, the majority of the products and services [commodities]
are made by the “interaction” of two classes:1)
employers/capitalists, who own the means of production (corporations,
business, plants, raw materials and so on) and 2) salaried workers,
aseptically known as “employees” (this nomenclature sounds cooler
to the capitalists, sorry… the employers). Employees have to work
for others in return for a salary which has lower value than the work
done. Otherwise,
where else do the profits come from? Wages are valued less than the
benefits that the employer receives from the labour of these
workers.6
There’s
an extra activity of the workers which isn’t paid for the
capitalists. For that reason, once the goods are sold, the
businessmen transform that difference (the surplus) into juicy
profits. This “magical” social process make possible with each
passing day the inequity between capitalist and workers are higher
and according to Oxfam (who are not suspects of being a Communist
organization), the richest 62 people on the planet are as wealthy as
half of world’s population nowadays.7
But,
what’s this boring Marxist stuff all about? Wasn’t it more
appropriate to explain the exploitation of workers of Manchester
cotton factories in the 19th Century than to analyze the provocative
music video of the Caribbean Muse in the 21st Century? Actually it’s
not, because the capitalist exploitation works in all sector where
the quoted two social classe - that still nowdays split the humanity
in two opposing parts - interact. It doesn’t matter if they produce
cars, ice-creams, missiles, music videos, condoms or Pope Fancisco’s
rosaries. Therefore, music video is an audiovisual product which
adopts the social form of “merchandise” in our system. In other
words, it is made by the investment of capital which is owned by
employers who hire workers to produce a video of their property to
sell it in the market for the best possible price.
And
when do Rihanna’s breasts come into the picture? In the war against
the competition. In that sense, we have to pay attention to the fact
that the human eye (no matter if it’s male or female one) watches
an image with sexual content 20% faster than any other.8
For that reason, another pop celebrity, Miley Cyrus, quoted “wisely”:
“You are more famous the more you show your tits”.9
Because of that, in an audiovisual market (like YouTube) full of
music videos competing fiercely for viewers, it’s functional for
businessmen and women who invested in them to employ this visual lure
to catch audience attention.10
Once the audience is collected it will be sold to the advertisers who
paid for music videos as merchandise. In other words, when millions
of young people are trapped watching Rihanna’s artistically
enhanced beauty or Justin Bieber’s pectorals, the advertisers have
to pay YouTube and other owners of music videos (like Vevo, Warner,
etc.) for creating such a good bait to convert attention into
commodities. In that way, advertising companies will be able to bomb
the Rihanna and Bieber’s followers with that well-developed way of
brainwashing called advertising. And everyone will be happy, won’t
they?
Actually,
there are a lot of people who are losing out these days. Not only
workers, who are increasingly poorer in relation to businessmen in
everywhere,11
but the music, musicians and music video lovers. Due to capitalist
factors, which
restrict mainstream music, popular music is poorer musically and
semantically with each passing day. In
parallel, music videos which illustrate pop music have an increasing
homogeneous form and content. The media oligarchy who personifies
capitalist and class logic of the cultural industry impedes the
possibility of making mass music more diverse and to posses more
quality than it has.12
What’s
more, within music videos happens something I’ve called the
“endless coitus strategy”.13
This strategy bases its attraction power in sexual arousal. In that
way music videos retain audience`s gaze in an endless jumpiness which
contains the promise of the orgasm reward that the same
communicational flow have to deny it in order that this attention
will be merchandised and it could be deflected to that offer within
audiovisual content. In the dominant music video, the endless coitus
curse achieves its higher expression and its exhausted voyeurs make
up its punished and loyal audience.
Moreover,
because the media oligarchy who rules/censors mass music form summit
of the industry blocks the ability of this kind of music to deal with
matters other than sex, wealth, competitiveness, aggressiveness or
love; there
are a lot of important matters that disappear or are silenced in the
mainstream music video flow. Among others, those that are related to
system, social inequity, wars, hunger or climate change critics.
Neither do we even find others placed far away from politics like
friendship, solidarity, spirituality or love (understood as something
beyond unidimensional sex-appeal). For that reason, more and more,
we’ll watch Rihanna’s videos in which she shows her carnal
“secrets” and less and less the politically Michael Jackson’s
committed and partially censored “They Don´t Care About Us”.14
Nowadays, artistic freedom for singer celebrities is one of the more
restricted in living memory. As a consequence of the concentration
and centralization of the capital which fund mainstream music videos,
the ideological and cultural content depends on the will of fewer and
fewer people every day.
The
existence of some few critic groups like Calle 13 or Rise Against
within the audiovisual flow provided by the “big money” (ruled by
only three major labels which control 92% of the distribution of the
most popular videos) doesn’t change the fact that the flow is
overwhelmingly in the majority in favour of ideologies and values
which are useful for business people.15
A well-known couple of friends said this a long time ago: “The
ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas (…)
the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the
same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the
means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same
time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally
speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production
are subject to it.”16
Maybe
in the endless escape that capitalism is doomed (economically,
politically and culturally), we arrive at a situation which nowadays
can still seem surprising for us. Yes, that’s it. Maybe in a few
years, mainstream music videos will show pop singer celebrities
having explicit sex scenes to attract the attention of the future
audience.17
Not in vain, they can’t seduce it in a different way except with
sexuality. And if pop celebrities like Rihanna are showing their
nipples, it will be impossible to reduce the temperature. Not show
them, from now on, it will be a high-level corporation risk. At least
for Rihanna and similar artist. This (which seems like a practical
joke) illustrates us about the nonsense of our socioeconomic system.
At
the end of this article, four questions come to mind. Firstly, how
many music videos will Rihanna star from now on without showing her
nipples? Secondly, when will the first celebrity penetrative sex or
fellatio occur? Thirdly, when will the majority of people realize
there is no another possible cultural present under capitalism? And
lastly, when will those who desire a better world realize with that
“cultural fast-food” there won’t be a possible alternative
future without creating a contrahegemonic culture which will be able
to seduce the majorities?
Time
passes inexorably, it accelerates and in the hand of others oppresses
us without any significant resistance. At least let’s ask ourselves
to shout out what we can do, otherwise the same powerful people as
usual, from their huge speakers, will dictate us the rhythm and the
melody of our lives. And meanwhile, from the altar of the secular
power of the bourgeois, Rihanna’s nipples or whoever’s nipples
will replace them, they will be the opium of a future full of
cadavers. Yes, because our cadavers will be slaughtered by
excruciating work rhythms, continuous political mockery and the
complete extermination of every culture that has some humanism.
It
has nothing to do with censoring sexual content of any cultural
product at all, but understanding that we, as human beings, are much
more than excited phallus and breasts looking forward to be consumed.
But this is something which contradicts the function that capitalism
wants from us. For that reason, Rihanna is a slave of her own
nipples. They have become the spearheads of the international
capitalism’s udders.
Will
we breastfeed from them?
*
The author has a PhD in Sociology and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine
Arts. His last book was published recently in Spanish: La
Dictadura del Videoclip. Industria
musical y sueños prefabricados
(El Viejo Topo, 2015).
** This article is shared under a Creative Commons License 4.0 (Attribution/Non Commercial/No derivatives).
Notes:
1.
ILLESCAS,
Jon E. (2015), The Music Video Dictatorship. Musical
Industry and Prefabricated Dreams. Barcelona:
El Viejo Topo, p. 65 / La
dictadura del videoclip. Industria musical y sueños prefabricados.
Barcelona:
El Viejo Topo, p. 65
2.
Madonna showed her nipple during less than one second (almost
imperceptible) in a long shot of Papa Don’t Preach (1986), when she
was already a star. It happened in some fast shots between 1:36 and
1:39 of running time.
3. The
Rihanna’s last music video “Sleedghammer” is from the motion
picture “Star Trek Beyond” and its artistic police depends on the
people in charge with Star Trek (not only the Rihanna’s staff and
her bosses). For that reason nipples weren’t allowed and for the
same reason this video has reached a lower number of views (“only”
37 million in 6 months).
4.
Sometimes
without covering it by any garment (Bitche
Better Have My Money)
and other times with some transparent clothes (Work
and
Needed Me).
5.
EUROPEAN
COMISSION (2015), Situation
of Young People in the UE,
Bruselas: European Comission, p. 7. Data for United States:
Indexmundi [19/04/2016]. EU, USA and Russia: World Bank.
6.
MARX, Karl (2010), El
Capital (3 tomos).
Madrid:
Siglo XXI.
7.
ELLIOT, Larry (2016), «Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of
world’s population, says Oxfam». In The
Guardian,
[online], 18 January.
8.
ANOKHIN, Andrey P. and others (2008), « Rapid discrimination of
visual scene content in the human brain ». In National
Institute of Health,
[online], 4th of Juny.
9.
GÓMEZ, Lourdes (2014), «Miley Cyrus: ‘Eres más famosa cuanto más
enseñas las tetas’». In El
Mundo,
[online], 6 May.
10.
The first person who discovered the commercialization of the audience
was communication theorist Dallas W. Smythe. Afterward, the one who
specified it wasn’t the audience but its attention actually was
Tanner Mirrless.
11.
FARIZA, Ignacio (2015), «El 1% más rico tiene tanto patrimonio como
todo el resto del mundo juntos» . In El
País,
[online], 13 October.
12.
ILLESCAS, Jon E. (2015), La
dictadura del videoclip. Industria musical y sueños prefabricados.
Barcelona:
El Viejo Topo, chapter 10.
13.
Ibíd., p. 283.
14.
We mean the censored version of “Prision”, but we do also with
the one which had less censorship and almost of his fans know it (the
one which was recorded in Brazil by Spike Lee).. Ibíd.,
pp. 400-402.
15.
Ibíd., p. 138.
16.
MARX, Karl y ENGELS, Friedrich (1846), La
ideología alemana.
Barcelona:
Grijalbo [1972], p.50.
17.
In some concerts, several singer celebrities already simulate having
sex with their fans and followers. ILLESCAS,
Jon E. (2015), La
dictadura del videoclip. Industria musical y sueños prefabricados.
Barcelona:
El Viejo Topo, p. 287.
The
original Spanish article was finished on the 19th of April 2016 and
it was published on Topo Express and the English Version (with
updated data) was finished on the 13th of January 2017.
