about the SuicideGirl Belle and Sebastian Music Video

Now this is interesting…to me, and really only because someone quoted a line from one of my interviews on a random topic, which technically makes me a cited philosopher now, doesn’t it? So I can give myself a pat on the head for that. Belle and Sebastian released a song called ‘Suicide Girl’, and SuicideGirls made a music video for the song. One Jim Williams of Kentucky* shared the video and said the following: “This video is described as a “Suicide Girls love letter to Belle and Sebastian”, and yet, presumably, Stuart work mark it ‘Return to Sender’. Stuart’s lyric for ‘Suicide Girl’ is not condemnatory, but it certainly expresses regret regarding the girl who “gives it all away”. The idea that the Suicide Girls phenomenon appeals to a “radical side” is of course ridiculous. Pornography is what it is – it’s neither radical nor conservative. That said, I’m not convinced that a woman loses anything by being paid to be filmed naked. And nor is artist, model and photographer, Rebecca Tun, who sums up this patronising, reductionist view as follows: “an unconscious line of reasoning [that runs] a bit like this: women revealing their bodies is a sexual act; female sexual activity consists of giving something away as if it were a finite commodity (it can after all be bought). Therefore when a woman reveals her body she’s giving something away, somehow decreasing the value of her assets.” For my part, the last woman I met who was ‘wrapped up in books’ (which included Nadine Strossen’s ‘In Defence of Pornography’ and Avedon Carol’s ‘Nudes, Prudes and Attitudes: Pornography and Censorship’) was also frequently ‘unwrapped’, in both pornographic magazines and lovers’ rooms. No fantasy affairs – she dared to get wet, so to speak.” I don’t have anything to add to the discussion at the moment. I think Jim hit the nail on the head in describing the attitude in question as both ‘patronizing’ and ‘reductionist’. *correction: Jim of Stafford, Staffordshire, and not Staffordsville, Kentucky 🙂