What the hell, Duran Duran? I mean, Rio and Hungry Like the Wolf had their share of sexism, but this goes above and beyond.

I didn't even get through much of it. But they make it look so pretty, don't they? Sucking my teeth...sigh.

Maybe I am misinterpreting the video but the message I took from it was that all the "rehab" centers they send Hollywood starlets to aren't so much helping them as they are an ineffective quick fix with a resort like atmosphere. I thought they were pointing out how distorted the view of "rehab" has become to the elite and how even though society is outwardly saying that they want these girls to "get help," the entertainment industry and their consumers are the ones perpetuating these problems (i.e. here have another glass of champagne.)

I really didn't see that they were making it look "pretty." They seemed to be making the whole charade of resort rehab look ridiculous.

I'm sure they weren't making this connection intentionally but it seems exactly the forced mass-institutionalizing of women in the 19th century for whatever reasons were convenient. Plenty of those women were suffering from the anxiety of oppression, and then punished for it by being sent to these places. All the women in that video were young, and fashionable, and obviously not legitimately crazy but actually the way that many people expect women to be, especially hollowood women - and then their boyfriends drop them off in between cell phone calls because for the BF can drink champagne in the back of a limo and wear the latest fashions and drop $300 on haircuts, but thats not crazy, right?

I hated the way the womans bf(?) treated her. He talked to her like she was an idiot infantile child. Why wouldnt she leave him. To survive in Hollywood you have to be pretty cutthroat, and I cant imagine a woman taking that kind of crap.

Yeah, did I miss something or were all of the hospital/asylum staff male? Because all I saw was a bunch of beautiful young women with some form of addiction or mental issue locked in an asylum at the mercy of their male authorities. Oh, and that this scenario is very, very sexy.

Which I don't think takes a huge leap to describe as a rapist fantasy.

There were some nurses that were women in the video, but they were just as dolled up as the patients.

I have to agree with Jamie and mhaller. They might have been trying to make a point about young women in Hollywood, particularly heiresses, being crazy and need of help and not really getting it. If that's the point they were trying to get across, I think it was too subtle. More attention was paid to making the women in the video look crazy chic.

Gopher - All the doctors are portrayed by members of the band, who all happen to be male. (One of them has been in and out of rehab a couple of times, even - big shock there, I know.)

Duran are rather notorious for the poor treatment of women in their videos, and have been for years, even when trying to convey a pseudo-positive message.

You might be interested in the analysis of DD videos in these two essays:

I am the eye, you are my victim: The Pornographic Ideology of Music Video
http://enculturation.gmu.edu/2_2/cole/

and

Sex, Rhymes and Videotape
http://tinyurl.com/367ld7 (Internet Archive).

I never understood crazy-chic. As someone who's done time in a number of those places, I can say with some authority that they are quite possibly the least sexy or cool places on Earth. Everything reeks of cigarettes and urine, someone's always screaming/crying/drooling/babbling, and if you're lucky there'll be some mild entertainment in the form of a handful of orderlies wrestling someone to the floor to deliver a Haldol injection in a butt cheek and haul them to the quiet room. I mean, they're places where people who have been deemed dysfunctional on the outside are kept. Not sexy, just sort of sad, gross, and creepy.

I really, really don't get it.

My first thought was that the video was portraying the fashion industry itself as a madhouse, where young women are marched around, given drugs, dressed up like dolls, and instructed to do nonsensical things.

Probably more likely, though, is Jamie's interpretation, that this is instead a statement about rehab centers.

I don't think they're doing a very good job at making either of these statements, but it looks to me like that's what they're trying to do.

There is NO music video as disturbing as the new on by Toby Keith. In the video, he has his girlfriend (or wife? I dunno) tied up in a basement and the whole video is based on a faux-murder theme. He pretends to bash her brains with a shovel, then throws it to the side at the last minute. The whole video is a torture/murder scene, and it's not supposed to be funny, at least I don't think.

I don't know the song name, but go look up Toby Keith's newest videos. BY FAR it is the most awful form of sexism I've seen in a video.

From the inside (I am in the radio/recording biz): these guys will always use the defense (rock, country, whatevs) that art just reflects society. Just like film/tv. Unless we scream bloody murder and boycott they'll just keep it up. I do think, in DD's defense, that they may have had a decent goal in mind but the videographer is only interested in eye candy. And really, so is the band. Who'd watch a video that shows how ugly real addiction and dependence can be? REAL sickos.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere in Feministing that young girls' self-esteem levels dropped after just 15 minutes watching music videos, and no wonder! Personally I find it quite entertaining/saddening/disturbing (if such a combination is possible) to count how many times bikini-clad girls appear in a music video FOR NO REASON AT ALL. Take for instance Maroon Five's Wake Up Call (just a random example): the video has a whole storyline about a guy who finds his girlfriend in bed with another guy, kills him and gets rid of the body... So why is it sprinkled with shots of girls dancing in bikinis? And don't even get me started on Nickelback's Rock Star! I suggest you all try this at home... paraphrasing Spanish journalist Nuria Varela, it's kinda like watching MTV through purple-tinted glasses

Disgusting and sad. Yes...Duran Duran? YIKES!!!!

Disgusting and sad! All I can say is Duran Duran...yikes!!

That made me feel physically ill. Being pushed in by her boyfriend (as others pointed out, he was patronising and appeared to do exactly the same as her but he's a MAN), there was no "treatment" but being drugged by the male doctors, not even letting them take their own pills, women dancing naked in front of the men... *shudder*

i have to wonder if there would be so much defense and artistic interpretation of this video if had been a rap video?

this is ridiculous. I am a guy and nobody who will ever watch that video unless they are sick or purposely looking for some type of plight against women, is going to find that sexist. It is obviously a twisted interpretation on the hollywood rehab infatuation, and that's that. Take it at it's face value. Yeesh