Damsel in distress no longer describes female pop artists in music videos. With the release of the music video ‘Disclosure’ by Magnets featuring Lorde, there is an undeniable gruesome violent trend coming from female singers and it is sweeping across the music video industry.
The 'Disclosure' music video portrays Lorde tying a man, presumed to be a cheating guy, to a chair and then pushing him into a pool as he begs for her to stop. She then opens a lighter and throws it into the pool, setting it ablaze. Sounds like something straight out of a horror film.
Lorde took to Twitter explaining how the scene actually allowed her to live out a long time fantasy of hers. She wrote, “’one of my life goals has always been ‘to one day play a hitgirl who pretends to seduce then burns alive douche boyfriends[.]’”
Killing people as a life goal? Maybe if you’re Freddy Kruger. Sadly, Lorde fans weren’t shocked by the video. In fact many of her followers fawned over her performance with high praises of “I LOVE YOU” and “can you burn me too?”
Lorde gruesomely killing a man isn’t an isolated instance of murder and torture among females in the music video world. According to The Atlantic:
To the pile of recent instances you can add Swift’s “Blank Space,” in which she bashes a boyfriend’s things and—it’s suggested, though not shown—his body to the point of unconsciousness; Lana Del Rey’s “High by the Beach,” in which the singer uses an enormous gun to blast a paparazzi dude out of the sky; and possibly the biggest bloodbath in mainstream pop history, Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money,” which depicts the gruesome dismemberment of a crooked accountant and the torture of his wife. The politics of the genre are, on one level at least, clear: These videos are meant to blow up social expectations that women remain passive.
“Not remaining passive” is an understatement when you look at the violent acts depicted in this gory music video trend. The Atlantic appeared to applaud the trend though, chalking it up to “empowerment.” “One school of thought says that the violence is an empowerment move that might even help warn off would-be attackers of women; another says it all plays into attitudes about right-through-might that, in the end, can favor male dominance in society[,]” said The Atlantic.
Another “excuse” the Atlantic provided for women behaving badly is that it is just meant to be ironic or just a technique to help women stand out in the music industry:
[M]ost everyone understands that the appearance of misandry or of immoral action is meant to be ironic, knowing, venting—a symbolic corrective in a world where men far more commonly hurt women than vice versa…. The other factor worth noting is the online war for attention. As music videos have lost their position as youth-cultural canon enforced by MTV and instead just become another piece of content on which users have to decide whether or not to click, headlines about controversy help stand out.
Don’t expect this estrogen-infused and media-glamorized killing spree trend to disappear from the music scene. The feminist equality mentality combined with upping the shock value is a dangerous mix. For now it seems, if you can’t beat the boys, then you might as well join them — or in this case just kill them.
