Love the Way You Lie: Pop culture, Race and Domestic Violence

A still from the video

When Eminem and Rihanna released their video “Love the Way You Lie”, anti-violence advocates and Media Literacy Project took concern. The video tells a superficial narrative of an abusive relationship with no real analysis.

So often we brush pop culture to the wayside of any true discussion about culture or politics. But it’s pop culture that has the ability to shift not only our personal preference for music or fashion, but also our understanding of what’s “normal” or accepted.

Eminem and Rihanna are two of the bestselling pop artists of the past two decades and, coincidentally, have each played publicly high-profile roles on opposite ends of violent relationships. Eminem, a Detroit-bred rapper, rose to stardom in the late 90s with a string of provocative albums, some in which he rapped about killing his ex-wife, Kim Mathers. Rihanna was born and raised in Barbados, and survived a very public assault by ex-boyfriend and fellow singer Chris Brown. Unfortunately, when the two teamed up to sing “Love the Way You Lie” to offer a critique of abusive relationships, they inadvertently glorified it.

The premise for the video of the hit song is all too common: a young straight white couple caught in the throes of a chaotic exchange of physical and verbal abuse. The male lead in the video is Dominic Monaghan, a well-known actor in the TV series Lost. Megan Fox, an actress and model best known for her role in Transformers, plays the female lead.

The scene, or text of the video, is a messy home with wood-panel walls in a modest working-class house. There are clothes strewn all over the house, marked by dark grays and blues. The couple seems caught between the desire to make love or start a war. At different moments in the video, they’re gathered in a passionate embrace or hitting one another. At one point the man punches his fist through a wall. At another, it’s hard to tell if he’s making love to the woman or sexually assaulting her. The video shifts from the present to the past, replaying the seemingly alluring moments in which the couple first fell in love over drinks at a bar.

Throughout it, Eminem screams his lyrics aggressively in the background as if he himself were the male character of the video. The words connote how and why a love so provocatively fierce in one moment could have gone terribly wrong. Rihanna sings the chorus as if she were the female character of the video. Her line, and title of the song, “I love the way you lie” suggests the female character finds some erotic pleasure in being repeatedly betrayed and abused. The two play their parts in front of a house that’s engulfed in flames. The flames, one can imagine, represent the heat of desire, of anger and, at some points, of regret.

Rihanna was quoted after the video’s release saying that it was “something that needed to be done and the way [Eminem] did it was so clever. He pretty much just broke down the cycle of domestic violence.”

However, advocates for survivors of domestic violence disagreed, and with good reason.

Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, said that Rihanna had unwittingly glorified the violence of which she herself had been a victim. “She’s narrating the story, and she’s not judging it,” O’Neill said. “She may not intend to be glorifying it, but she is.”

Marjorie Gilberg, executive director of the anti-violence group Break the Cycle, had waged similar claims. “The danger is that pop culture defines our social norms,” Gilberg told the Associated Press. She went on to explain that this video needs to be viewed in the context of real information about domestic violence and the cycle of violence that is represented in the video.

The video paints a clear picture of an abusive and violent relationship. The couple in the video met and fell in love with no intention of violence which is very true for anyone in a violent relationship. Also, the video summarizes some of the pieces of the cycle of violence. Clearly there is a moment of jealousy, a violent reaction, and then a “honeymoon” period where the male character gives the female character a stuffed teddy bear and an apology.

The video tells a gripping story, but it doesn’t paint the entire picture, or even begin to reveal the truths many anti-violence advocates have seen over and over. Instead, viewers are left wondering what brought these two people to this place. What’s conditioned them to react violently and expect – perhaps even encourage – self-destruction?

In this representation, passion and violence are one and the same. We don’t see the bruises, the ambulances, and the police cars. We don’t see the tears, and there’s no visual representation of the fear that countless domestic violence are forced to endure, often in silence. Despite the chorus of the video, victims do not relish in being abused. Many of them stay in violent relationships as a survival strategy. A report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that almost one-third of female homicide victims that are reported in police records are killed by an intimate partner.

Domestic violence is an issue that’s especially pertinent in 2011. Statistics show that domestic violence sharply increases during times of economic upheaval. The country is still in one of its worst economic recessions since the Great Depression. It’s had an especially pronounced impact on communities of color. In a 2004 report from the National Institute of Justice, an agency of the Department of Justice, researchers found that when unemployment rates go up among men, so does domestic violence against women. These statistics are particularly significant for Blacks and Latinos who are experiencing unemployment at a higher rate than whites.

Both artists are in unique positions to talk about these issues. Eminem reached the top of pop music charts with the help of songs like “Kill You” and “Just the Two of Us”, angry tracks in which he graphically detailed assaulting and, sometimes, murdering his ex-wife. Though advocates voiced considerable outrage at his glorification of violence, the song for this latest album, “Recovery”, was meant to be an introspective look at the mistakes of his past. Critics praised the more mature and tolerant side of the artist. Rihanna had the eyes of millions of girls across the country when the Los Angeles Police Department released photos of her face after she was brutally beaten by Brown. Although the media moment privileged Brown, Rihanna’s popularity with young women could influence their perceptions of normal and healthy relationships.

Unfortunately, this video was a missed opportunity for both artists to help shift cultural norms towards healthier relationships. Instead, this video is at minimum a shallow narration of a violent relationship and at worst a glorified story of abuse and romance. A truly serious discussion of domestic violence is even more crucial in a moment when the growing economic crisis has major implications for the level of intimate violence in the home. Media literacy offers an opportunity to peel away the layered messages and complexities of a piece of media like Eminem and Rihanna’s latest co-production and set the video in context of a larger picture of pervasive domestic violence where the line between abuse and eroticism is very clear.

Leticia Miranda is the Media Research Associate with Media Literacy Project.