Like the 90 million who’ve watched Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion‘s ‘WAP’ video, Russell Brand admits to being “spellbound” by the “power of female sensuality and sexuality’ the racy visual.
However, the actor/activist has pondered aloud whether the clip is progressive or whether it feeds the objectification that fuels inequality.
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In a YouTube “review,” Brand said:
“From a political perspective, I don’t know that that demonstrates progress because gender and sex aside, what are the values that we are collectively aspiring to?
Objectification of the other, objectification of the self, is objectification something that we’re aspiring to sexuality and sensuality as commodity? I think that in a sense we are not ambitious enough about what we are aspiring to culturally.”
He went on to add:
“I wouldn’t be so reductive and simplistic to say that women celebrating their bodies using an aesthetic that’s conventionally been associated with the male gaze means it’s impossible that these tools could be used as a vehicle for liberation.
But I am saying that in a sense it’s still the same metric, it’s still the same aesthetic, it’s still the same values, it’s still the same ideals.
It’s still ultimately a sort of capitalist objectification and commodification of, in this case, the female.I am not suggesting that they aren’t powerful auteurs and powerful creators, I’m saying that we ought to be aspiring to an entirely different set of values, not who has the power within an established set of values.”
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His words come after CeeLo Green echoed similar sentiments.