“Please Don’t Leave Me” by P!nk

I just saw the video for “Please Don’t Leave Me” by P!nk. It cracked me up. This is how music videos should be done.

Plus the references to Misery, Cujo, It and The Shining will please Stephen King fans.

As I was watching it, I couldn’t help but muse on the fact that a male singer could never get away with making a music video in which he repeatedly imprisons and inflicts physical harm on a woman. Well, he could, but we wouldn’t call it a “dark comedy” if he did, and most people would find it sick and a little misogynist.

And yet here I am, laughing at this video and the things P!nk does to this poor man. My husband is the one who called my attention to it, and he thought it was hilarious too, so I’m probably not just being an insensitive man-hater. Or if I am, I’m in good company.

It probably isn’t right, is it?

Comments

“Please Don’t Leave Me” by P!nk — 8 Comments

Katie Langston on April 24, 2009 at 12:56 AM said:

No way, man, it’s definitely right.

That was a crazy video. Nothing wrong with a bit of black comedy every now and then.

I’ve always kinda liked Pink in a guilty pleasure, I-shouldn’t-really-be-listening-to-this sort of way. I don’t own any of her records or anything, but I’ve been known to turn up the volume when “Get the Party Started” or something comes on the radio.
Bridget Jack Meyers on April 24, 2009 at 9:16 AM said:

As pop music goes, P!nk is one of the better artists. Especially good for angry chick music.
JB on April 24, 2009 at 9:29 AM said:

That… was sorta messed-up. And yet still entertaining. I’m with you and Paul, that was pretty funny.
BrianJ on April 24, 2009 at 9:33 AM said:

I just watched Spinal Tap last night and this very discussion comes up in the ~~film~~—excuse me, ‘rockumentary’. Funny.
jjohnsen on April 24, 2009 at 3:52 PM said:

I loved her video for the song “So What” (I think that’s what it’s called) where she makes fun of how beautiful celebrities are treated, and makes fun of how she’s portrayed in the media.
Rollingforest on March 22, 2011 at 11:45 AM said:

So the video isn’t loading for me, but I can imagine.

I think that people like dark humor but only about things that don’t normally happen in real life (which is a good definition for all humor really). So when making a video that suggests rape, it’s only funny if it is about a type of rape that doesn’t normally happen. In real life, 99% of rapists are male for 3 reasons: 1. Men are physically stronger (though in the age of guns, this attribute is less important), 2. Men have penises (easier to rape as the “giver” than the “taker”) and, most importantly, 3. Women have wombs (a woman can only normally have one baby at a time while a man could theoretically impregnate thousands of women in that period, meaning that a man can spread his genes, by wooing or by rape, far more than a woman can. Also since it is pretty easy to find men who want to have sex with women, a woman doesn’t need to rape a man impregnate herself, whereas a man in some cases might only have kids if he were to rape a woman) Thus a woman raping an adult man is almost nonexistent in our society.

But that doesn’t mean it’s completely nonexistent. Using a gun or handcuffs, a woman could anally rape a man with an object, for example. Even rape by vaginal sex could happen (it is possible to get a man to have an erection against his will) Here, for example, is one case of a woman being accused of raping a man. It even involves Mormons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_sex_in_chains_case

I’m not one to favor censorship of any kind or telling someone they are not allowed to make a certain piece of art (though criticism is still an option). What is far more important to me is what people believe about real life.
Ms. Jack on March 22, 2011 at 3:11 PM said:

RollingForest ~ I fixed the link.

The Cynthia McKinney case was one of the first that I ever blogged about when I started blogging,here and here. I was a bit more curmudgeonly back then than I am now, and I was pretty harsh on McKinney, probably more so than I would be today.

And I still love this video.
Rollingforest on March 22, 2011 at 4:11 PM said:

Whether or not McKinney was actually a rapist, I think the more important issue today is how people react to the idea. I see from scanning the comments on the other two posts that criticism or backing of the rape allegation has little to do with the gender of the person reading. There were men who took both sides of the issue and women as well. Rape cases are often hard to prove since consent and nonconsent produce the same physical evidence in many cases. But I guess the important thing is whether people understand that just because men want sex more often does not mean that consent is automatic.

Maybe one day in society we will get to a point where someone could make the Pink video with the genders reversed and it would be okay because neither combination would be seen as a common threat in reality. In the mean time, perhaps we could just take these artists at their word that whichever gender is in peril in the video, they aren’t advocating rape in real life.

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