[Deleted for abuse and commenter suspended.]

"The producers of this clip should really watch an episode of Criminal Minds, as it does not take much to realise that a person who enjoys eroticised sexual images has the makings of a violent criminal."

You get your information about violent criminals from WATCHING A FICTIONAL TV SHOW?!

If no action is taken ( as wasn't done with earlier dumb$hit pop music) then this type of video will become accepted as normal viewing in no time at all.
The problem is, who has to take action ? We have people who are charged with checking on such media but don't do anything & then we have people who take action but then get charged for doing so. Society is indeed a mindless mob.

Have you actually watched the video,Ms Elias?

There are just as many scenes of women inflicting bloody violence upon men, it's pretty much equally distributed, however that isn't really the point.

The video is called "Monster." It's from an album called *My beautiful dark twisted fantasy.* Now there's a clue.

It's about, among other things, the singers' perceptions of the rapacious, vampirish nature of the music industry. It's about race. Its about, as the lyrics would tell you if you read them all, the desperate desire for love rather than exploitation.

Would you rather they were all eating cornflakes at the kitchen table?

You ask: *After all, this is exactly the message that we would all like to pass onto teenage boys - that women are dehumanised objects that men should treat with violence for their own sexual pleasure - is it not?*

a)No it isn't.
b) It is also about female violence against men, and
c) I have some faith both in teenage boys and adult males that they can distinguish between fantasy monsters and reality.

Far worse things happened in Grimm's fairy tales. Cooking children, cutting open stomachs, chopping off hands....

Now you, Melinda Tankard Reist, and your cohorts want to get the video banned because you can only see it from your own perspective, ignoring any other, and there are many.

Why, I would like to know, should you feel that your perspective ought to be the dominant one, and that you have the right to impose censorship on everybody else?

Human beings have our dark sides. Far better that it is expressed than repressed - that is one of the functions of music and art.

And how anyone could find anything erotic in this video is beyond me. Necrophilia does not have the universal appeal you seem to attribute to it, and I don't see it catching on anytime soon because of KanYe West.

Far worse things happened in Grimm's fairy tales. Cooking children, cutting open stomachs, chopping off hands....
briar rose,
I don't believe it to be realistic to draw parallels between the written word in a child-like fashion for a child's mind & the intensely realistic graphics of a violent video. I'm sure if you take the average child i.e. of non-academic parents, and you let it read about the wolf eating people it would hardly lose a moments sleep as only an imagined image is stored in the subconscience. However, play a violent video & there will be subsequent nightmares for the average child. Therein lies the difference. Short-term fright story vs long-term damage.

The author is notably silent about Gabriella Cilmi's clip for 'Sweet about me'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvuyYj5ROmk

Great example, Clownfish - roped man hung upside down on a meat hook, images of torturing blokes, references to water boarding a bloke, cutting the bloke loose at the end so he'll bash his brains out on a concrete floor, and a woman in charge of all of it.

Why aren't MTR and her followers calling for this to be banned?

This banning the KanYe West thing has been going on for weeks. See my *Flesh eating coffins and women in masks* article in OLO 23rd December 2010

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11411

The summary of a long tussle that went on about this with MTR and followers when she published an article in the Drum about the video.

Why is it ok for feminists to tell men to be a real man and protect women? Are they fragile things who need men to rescue them? Wanting to be treated like equals means never playing the helpless female.

Antiseptic - So you have a problem with Catholics... whatever... but religion has nothing to do with the fact that the release of the video is promoting a very sick form of violence

person - clearly the reference to Criminal Minds is not a serious source, it is just pushing the point that one must be very naive not to recognise that the themes in the video are not healthy

briar rose - so an inclusion of violence against men makes the content in the video justified? The fact is, the women behaving in a violent manner is also supposed to be erotic - which is equally degrading.

Well, Mary I don't agree with your premise that either video is intended primarily to be *erotic.*

if that is the intention, then they fail dismally.

I think both videos are expressing the writer/performers' vision of various complex situations, including their visions of relations between women and men, race relations, the nature of the music industry,and popular culture.

I don't think Cilmi's quite gets there, it's not very clever, a bit too obvious, but the KanYe West certainly raises these themes in a very confronting way.

You don't see any of this in either video - you see only sexual and gender based denigration and eroticized violence.

It's like reducing The Tempest to a feminist analysis - that is one analysis, but only one of many.

So anybody else who sees anything else is in a creative work is not to be allowed access to it, because your perception of the material rules? No other perception matters, only yours?
I can't watch KanYe West because you see something different to what I see?

How do you justify that tyranny?

And if you want to rid the world of images that are offensive to you on your particular grounds, you'll be having big burnings of the contents of every art gallery in the world and millions of movies since the original Dracula.

These things are creative visions, some good, some bad, some neither one nor the other. They express what's going on in somebody's head. Other people say, hey that represents what goes on in my head too, and others say, nothing like that ever goes on in my head and it shouldn't go on in anybody else's.

Read Aristotle about catharsis. People have dark imaginings - its part of being human - its a very different thing from actually doing something

Mary,

I signed your petition. Please see entry 5785.

Just to clarify your intriguing comment though..

'so an inclusion of violence against men makes the content in the video justified? The fact is, the women behaving in a violent manner is also supposed to be erotic - which is equally degrading.'

I don't think briar was saying the violence by women justifies anything, I see it as more a query as to why only the violence by women was a concern to you and the only thing you noted.

I am also interested, as to why young girls don't seem to be influenced to be a 'real woman' when they watch the Cilmi video. Is it because the Cilmi video is empowering and liberating?

'The fact is, the women behaving in a violent manner is also supposed to be erotic - which is equally degrading.'

Degrading to women or men? If it's degrading to men, how come you're not interested in mentioning the female violence in the Kanye video briar mentioned?

BTW: If Kanye wanted to show he was a 'real man', I'm sure he would just expose his penis. A penis is all that is required to prove man-hood. Or do you define what a 'real' man is in some other way? How does a 'real man' differ from a woman, or a fake man?

Ah, so many questions....

'... it’s just wrong. ' ; Compelling argument.

'Are you really comfortable with an underage teen growing up thinking it is normal to have sexual fantasies over a dead body? '

Please define 'normal' sexual fantasies?

'Violence against women is not entertainment. It never was, and it never will be. '
But there was no actual violence. They can do all sorts of things with makeup and trick camera work these days. Unless you count violently shoving thousands of dollars into the corpse-models purses.

the right to feeding ones sick little mind is far more important to many than the welfare of human beings. Look at the many who flock to ga ga concerts.

Mary Elias:"So you have a problem with Catholics."

No, not at all, some of my best friends are catholics. I have a problem with wowsers and faux-moralists who try to push a rather repellant barrow-load of personal prejudices and "social constructionalism".

Sadly, the Catholic diocese of Sydney seems to be full of you.

The views you express are not based on Catholic doctrine, but are more the product of women's studies workshops, with an overlay of what seems to be a real personal fear of sex and the male gender. They are only tangentially congruent with Catholicism, inasmuch as the church has always had an uneasy relationship with human sexuality, probably due to the inordinate number of paedophiles and perverts it harbours within its ranks.

Others have pointed out your hypocrisy and double standard in choosing to focus only on violence by men toward women. I'll simply say "hear. hear", while expecting you to turn a Nelsonian eye.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but for once, I agree with Runner!

In no way should this comment be taken as support for anything Kanye West does, he is an idiot who should be banned from making any more songs.

Mary, may I ask one question of you? Where are the Parents in all this? Or do you believe that everyone else is responsable for raising a child other than the Parents? Maybe it is not so much a result of bad people somehwere over there but decades and decades of appathetic people in the home. Children Mirror and Prefect what thier Parents show them. Commercial Enterprises will also always give the people what they want. If your looking for someone to blame for this you only need look in a mirror.

Aime you might think about the sick idea's that runner and those who share his extreme approach to faith push (including towards children). The idea of hell, the distorted and damaging views on human sexuality, the concept that our best is not good enough for their idea of a loving god who will burn those who don't accept their own worthlessness etc.

I'm not familiar with Mary Elias's history or associations but the brief intro claims that she is a practicing catholic and others claim that she is associated with MTR. MTR has a history of selective (and often far fetched) intepretation of content which she seeks to use to further her own agenda's.

Given the point's others have made about the contents of the video it is telling that the only violence mentioned by Mary is violence against women by men.

Will we see pieces by Mary raising concerns about the damage done to countless people by the teachings of her own church (including sexually)? Will we see a piece discussing the teachings and church culture which lead to a long history of sexual (and other) abuse of children by members of her own church and the coverup/avoidence of the issue by senior leadership for such a long time?

Will we see some pieces about the vast role violence plays in literature, film and television (including criminal minds)?

I've not seen the video being discussed but the article has all the hallmarks of a selective misuse of a part of something to push an agenda with little regard for the real issues.

R0bert

Mary,

Well done, you have done more to promote the video than the producers could wish for. This is a video done for shock content, and I don't recall anyone actually being assaulted, nor do I see anything pornographic.

If it offends your delicate Catholic sensibilities, then try not to watch it. As BR said Rock videos are unlikely to contain people eating cornflakes or prancing through fields of flowers.

Perhaps a note at the end stating that no models or small animals were harmed in the making of the video would make you feel better.

"Aime you might think about the sick idea's that runner and those who share his extreme approach to faith push (including towards children). The idea of hell, the distorted and damaging views on human sexuality, the concept that our best is not good enough for their idea of a loving god who will burn those who don't accept their own worthlessness etc."

My dear RObert. I'm in total agreement with you. I firmly believe that religions of all persuasions should be relegated to the dust-bin of history. I simply cannot understand how, in this enlightened age people can continue to believe in such nonsense and forcing their primitive beliefs and fears down the throat of their children is abhorrent to me, but at the same time if people were not "willing" to be entertained by the likes of this idiot in the film clip (which I haven't watched, but see enough of this type of junk on TV every Saturday mornings at work) this kind of rubbish entertainment (for lack of a better word) would soon cease to exist.

It doesn't matter how the film clip is interpreted, it's pure trash and it's polluting the minds of innocents. Same can be said for that horrid "Ga Ga' thing that masquerades as an entertainer. Parents of the past two generations simply haven't done enough to help prevent the explosion in this form of so called "entertainment." The makers of this crap keep pushing the boundaries and get away with anything they can in the obscene quest for money. I really think decent people should make a stand against this type of industry.

Thank you Aime, finally an objective comment. Far too many readers have a problem with this piece simply because the author is Catholic, which has nothing to do with the key issues!

Jeez, who died and let you lot become Jimmy Swaggart, ranting about 'that dirty, filthy, lewd, repetitive junk called rock'n'roll'?

Yessir, the fertility rites of the jungle are the same beats used in rock'n'roll to bring the white man down to the level of the negro.

Where will it all end? Think of the children!

Ok. I looked at the clip to see what all the fuss is about since it was only 40 secs long (I have extremely slooooow ADSL1)

Clownfish, you should be flogged for insinuating that hip-hop rubbish is in any way connected to Rock and Roll, but back to the film clip in question.

To be honest, what I saw didn't make me cringe. It looked more like a bad vampire show rather than anything else. Vampire and werewolf productions both on the big and small screen seems to be the new current trend and this clip is either a follow on from this new "scene" or in direct competition with it, but that doesn't mean to say producers of this trash should be allowed to encroach more and more into the realms of decency. Children actually watch this stuff on television in the early hours of the morning when their parents are still asleep. Ok, that particular clip might currently be shown in the early hours of the morning, but pretty soon it will sneak it's way into post daylight hours, put up perhaps, as a "blast from the past" or whatever.

Kids do get to see this junk "entertainment" and their forming minds eventually see it as normal behaviour. If my grandchildren were staying the night with me, then the parental lock would be going on the TV before I went to bed. I attribute much of the street violent that plagues out cities to watching too much graphic violence on TV and in video games. The classification limits of decency have been severely breached in this country and most of the rest of the Western world. Perhaps it's time for a re-think?

Mary,

Being objective essentially means weighing up all the issues and trying to exclude personal feelings, not simply agreeing with you.

Considering that Aime had not even seen the clip, her visceral response was purely subjective.

As for being Catholic, my experience is that charge of the Prudes / anti abortion / censorship brigade is overly represented by Catholics such as Melinda Tankard Reist etc.

Aime it's alway's difficult when there is a common foe. I consider the religious extremists and the way things work when they get their way a far bigger risk than American rappers and Hip Hop artists.

I think we achieve better outcomes by reduced censorhip and encouraging attitudes to sexuality and life which are based on self respect and respect for others than on guilt and shame. I'm suspecting we may agree on that.

I'm wondering if there is some confusion over which clip this is.

I think that it's this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kLcJ_zzLdHA

5 minutes 52 long. I didn't spot violence against men by women in the clip but there was a lengthy scene where one woman appeared to have another bound on a chair and often hooded - probably the closest to a portrayal of violence that I could see in the clip.

Not something I'm likely to watch over and over again. I've been wondering how different it is to the stuff Alice Cooper did/does. Some common theme's given the generational differences. I know as a teenager I understood Alice's shows were theater and from what I knew of others who enjoyed the show they seemed to get that it was theater. "Cold Ethel" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUFO_04J1r4 ) and "I love the Dead" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWU7FxQIsoM) had some similarities to the Kanye West stuff.

I don't know Kanye West's attitudes but there are a number of interviews around with Alice which touch on the theater aspect. The interview with Denton was good.

R0bert

RObert, I'll have a look at your video clip link as soon as I can before making further comment. I only viewed the one of 40 seconds in the original article.

I probably am getting old though. I recently went to a party comprising mostly young women and was a little bit taken aback by the foul language they used in every sentence and these are ordinary young women from a farming community. I suppose being brought up in a family where my aging parents (I was a very late arrival and probably an accident) never ever used anything more serious than bugger or bloody. I only once heard dad say sh.t and I believe he had a reasonable excuse to do so.

But, as every generation perceives, morals are slipping and values are in decline and really, I don't know what's to become of the next generation :-)

If it is hip-hop then ban the lot. I have actually heard a hip-hop singer trying to sing a normal song.

No thank you.

However the article is like so many. It focuses on one situation, and ignores the majority, and tries to portray men as being oppressors of women.

For example, it does not mention the myriad of songs on the radio, most of which are sung or have been written by men, and most of which are love songs.

If the majority is considered, it is men who are the lovers.

It's the devil's music, I tell ye!

Avant Garde is what comes to mind.

Avant garde is not really my cup of tea, but then there are people who do like it.

It really does get abit tiring the broken record about how this or that encourages violence against women, yet that same people who protest about violence against women, are silent, blind and deaf to the issues where women are encouraged overtly and covertly to behave in abusive manners towards men.

The point is people who protest at every opportunity about violence, are not that serious and are merely using it as a tool and method to justify their abuse of men.

If they were really serious about ending violence in our society then they would bring awareness about all forms of violence, not just those that suit their particular political sexist agenda.

what is so strange about this sort of video/performance is what it says about the man who made it - and his apparent sexual or 'intimate' (sic) preferences. it is also strange that the maker of the video (the guy in it) must believe that other men have this sexual preference or at least enjoy seeing a man engage in it. it further suggests that men enjoy seeing inert/dead bodies of women - and not only that, but inert/dead bodies of women being subjected to aggression and violence. the hatred of women embodied in such notions is breathtaking ... as is the implication for men generally. surely it is wholly demeaning of men to suggest (as the video appears to suggest) that they enjoy engaging in implied/metaphorical sexual activity with inert bodies, much less dead ones. necrophilia or intimations of it is surely not something to boast about?

Well, I don't really know what all the fuss is about.
I watched the whole video, and I didn't find it scary, sexist or erotic.
Certainly the violence was no worse than Alice Cooper or Ozzy Osbourne were when I was a teenager!

What about the crutch-grasping Michael Jackson for a sexual act?
How about Chrissie Amphlett (Divinyls) singing about touching herself...and the accompanying video?

I have not had any time for this KanYe West since he upstaged that poor girl Taylor Swift at the video music awards. A truly awful man.

I don't like hip-hop music at all, just like my parents didn't like Led Zeppelin, and my Grandparents didn't like Elvis Presley!

There will always be people in our society who believe they know all the morals that everyone else in society must follow, or else they are the devil's spawn :)

This scenario will continue down the generations, just as it always has..

So Jocelynne, what does the video say about the women who are stomping their stilettos into the man's body till he bleeds?

And the woman who is apparently tormenting another woman who is tied to a chair?

Or did the bad man who made the video force these women to act out his fantasy?

Isn't it equally demeaning, in your terms, for women to be represented and to represent themselves as desiring and enjoying these acts?

And have you watched the Cilmi video? What does that say about female desire do you think, and is it acceptable that female desire apparently needs to objectify the male and torture him? Is that not women demeaning women?

Or is it all theatre, as music videos have always been theatre?

The strand of feminism that steadfastly refuses to regard women as responsible adults, but always and only as victims of men, is not a desirable one.

Well said, Briar Rose

>>The strand of feminism that steadfastly refuses to regard women as responsible adults, but always and only as victims of men, is not a desirable one.<<

It is true that women have been objectified more often both now and throughout history, the solution is not subjecting men to similar abuses, but to stand up as adults (which us what I believe being a 'real' man or woman is about) and rejecting that which is demeaning, humiliating and abusive of either sex.

Fact is there is a percentage of women who do get their power kicks abusing other women - same for men, these people are usually just bullies. While there is a tiny demographic who get off on seeing dead female forms being demeaned, they are not the majority. What we need is united protest at the exploitation of any human being, not sex wars.

Be a real man? Well depending on ones perspective or values defines how one judges what is a real man or not.

Interesting article on what is known as Gynocentrism.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/2011/01/09/staring-out-from-the-abyss-gynocentrism-ii/

<Allow me to clarify. The traditional idea under discussion is male sacrifice for the benefit of women, which we term Gynocentrism. This is the historical norm, and it was the way of the world long before anything called 'feminism' made itself known. There is an enormous amount of continuity between the chivalric class code which arose in the Middle Ages and modern feminism,>

Anyway the commandment "Thou shalt not hit women" is as perhaps as old as chivalry or older.

Now that I have found time to see the video(thanks for the link Robert), Kanye should be arrested for crimes against my ears. His music is truly a crime. Risky film clips to publicise crap songs are nothing new.

My thoughts mirror Aime's on the increase in violence in the media. We live in strange times - on the one hand we have become immune to almost any level of violence in the media and on the other we keep bunging on about reducing violence in the real world including the growth of street violence etc. We have beome namby pamby about any ideas to reduce violence such as early closing times for pubs, greater scrutiny of Advertising/film etc.

Violence (victim and perpetrator) is across all genders. Even young women are getting 'tough' and like Aime has experienced foul mouthed conversations are too often heard among young women and men alike.

I agree with Mary that this video does nothing to add to the quality of news media and with benk that it is an assault on the ears, however the violence and themes are denigrating to both men and women.

It is disappointing to see the predicatable reactions to this video so far. While one may not agree with the degree in which this video clip (might be) harming society (as one of many), we certainly need to have a discussion about violence in the media and the impact on young people and the social psyche.

Responsibility also lies with parents to get with the program and start setting some boundaries for their children. Too many (in my experience) ignore the classifications for even very young children. Some parents found me odd years ago when my girls were younger asking them about which movies they were screening and why I declined the invitation after finding out The Ring and The Spy Who Shagged Me were being shown to a group of six year olds.

The real problem is that parents are AWOL due to too many work commitments, pressure of debt and so on. It is just too easy to slack off in the most important part of your life - at home.

Good on you Mary and others who continue to highlight these very important issues.

It really is amusing how the secularist here froth at the mouth at the thought of a wife submitting to the headship of her husband but are comfortable and even enjoy the 'freedom' to have woman portrayed as sex slaves as long as it is their 'choice'. Oh well I suppose that's the fruit of moral relativism so we should not be surprised.

runner you're a national treasure.

You never fail to bring a smile to my face.

The 40-second trailer clip compresses all the dead/drugged-fetished-women aspects of the full-length video and leaves out the plot and symbolism context. As for the full-length video, it's very Dario Argenta from the 60s or Robert Palmer from the 80s (only on steroids). Gender-politically speaking, however, it's strictly 1950s.

Both the men and the women are fetishised – but in ways that maintain the traditional gender power balance.

The women are all scantily clad, disembodied, dead, drugged and/or doing all the mandatory f*kme gyrating required for patriarchal S&M consumption. (10-inch stilletoes and blood ... oh, yawn!) By stark contrast, the men are equally fetishised in the gender-traditional way - e.g. suave (fully clothed) James Bond-style black tie and tux or displaying some sexy pecs under a black silk shirt or leather vest. So cool. So in control – and soooo ultimately victorious over all those lacy-undied, stilletoed harpies.

If it takes a petition to move the gender politics of music videos into the gender realities of the 2000s, then show me where to sign!

Killarney
I have not seen the video and no intention of watching it, however I think your description is similar to what is normally in a women's magazine.

"The women are all scantily clad"

"suave (fully clothed) James Bond-style black tie and tux or displaying some sexy pecs under a black silk shirt or leather"

Take out the dead bodies, and you have a women's magazine.

I think you’ll find that Mr. West’s intention in making that video is to accentuate the fact that he himself is a “monster”, or even a “motherf@#king monster”, as he so eloquently proclaims in his gravelly staccato. By juxtaposing himself with his innocent, peacefully suffering victims, viewers are *meant* to hate and revile him, precisely as the “sex obsessed psychopath that gets turned on by violence against women” he portrays himself to be. He is doing quite a brave thing actually (at least within the bounds of the mainstream): he is exploring his dark side, questioning himself about his tendency to fantasise about disturbing subject matter, declaring himself publicly, and laying himself open to scrutiny. I don’t know, perhaps he feels guilty about his little faux pas with Taylor Swift and is doing a bit of self-flagellating. As we keep hearing, men often have difficulty expressing their emotions, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have them – they just communicate in complex ways, such as through music and imagery.

But there’s no need to seriously worry about whether this video will in itself incite violence against, or objectification of women. Trust me, teenage boys are capable of imagining far worse things, but they are also smart enough to know what’s right and wrong - and in any case their lives consist of more than what they watch on TV. The best way to react to a thing like this is not to push it under the carpet, but to acknowledge that these ideas are out there, to ask ourselves why it is that young women and men are in so much pain that they would identify with such images, and to ensure that they have loving, nurturing, empathetic environments that will let them explore their ideas in a safe, empowering and self-aware manner.

Exploiting the youth is nothing new in the todays world, and better being burnt now than latter.

Guess the games!lol...it does make populist beliefs more easy to swallow. This cave/man thinking's.....girls! Do you not see the knuckle-dragging dementia prolonging your independence? WOW! Dont play to the tune.....but play to the grounds of....Iam me.......and there's a better choice than playing to the sounds of Mr Dick Williams, and don't some men just suck;)

Brains first.......party after.....catch the breeze.

Good luck.

BLUE

This whole post is a wish wash of feminist idealogy.

The next thing is we will ban everything.

THe premise of your argument is flawed. MOreover, it discounts any notion of freedom of speech and expression. The very thing you are doing posting this rubbish about a music video.

Grow up! Learn how to meditate instead of instigate.