Rihanna in the video for Princess of China.
acism is not ok. Sounds simple, right? Well, this week Rihanna and Coldplay prove that some people just don’t get it. And by some people, I mean Rihanna and Coldplay whose new video for their song “Princess of China,” is packed full of racist imagery.
Or perhaps I’m overreacting? There is another way of looking at this video: that it’s paying homage to Asian cultures. The video’s use of a wide variety of Asian cultural motifs could be a sign that Asians are no longer considered forever foreign, forever different. Perhaps it’s part of a larger process of cultural assimilation. But that’s a hard argument to make. Consider, for example, that of the two directors and two stars, none are in any way Asian.
Let’s look at these two viewpoints.
First, here’s some background on the song and video. Earlier this year, Coldplay and Rihanna released “Princess of China” as a single from Coldplay’s latest album. The title is a bit odd, since the song contains no lyrical references to China. It has some Asian musical touches, which is the best explanation that I have for the name. The lyrics are about a couple who could’ve been great together but have fallen apart: “Once upon a time we’re burning bright. Now all we ever do is fight.” I don’t see anything offensive in the song itself. Compared to some Rihanna songs, these lyrics are refreshingly thoughtful. And the music, while not fantastic, is at least interesting. And adding a variety of cultural elements to music is often a positive move, in my book.
But then came the video. A short version was released in April, featuring only Rihanna. She has chopsticks in her hair Her hair is made up like a Japanese geisha and multiple arms like a Hindu goddess or the “Dance of the Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva.” The video features seemingly random bits of Asian-ness, and Rihanna described her look as “gangsta goth geisha.” It wasn’t a good sign, and the video received some criticism for being racist. Coldplay has used it on their current concert tour.
Now, in this first week of June, a full version of the video came out. It’s a fake movie trailer for a martial arts action and love drama starring Chris Martin (lead singer of Coldplay) and Rihanna. Martin fights off ninjas, and Rihanna has a geisha hairstyle chopsticks in her hair again, with long fingernails, and multiple arms. There are elements strongly reminiscent of the Chinese film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Other than the lead singer, nobody from Coldplay appears.
Why do I say this is racist? First, it’s clearly a case of cultural appropriation with little involvement or credit given to anybody of that background. Of the song writers, two stars of the video, directors of the video, and producers of the song, none are Asian. That’s a bad sign and suggests money and exposure grabbing with no little to no benefits for the cultural group. Furthermore, the video is a mishmash of Japanese, Chinese, and Hindu imagery without any reason that I can find for why they would all be in the video, other than to give it more Asian-ness and with most having nothing to do with the meaning of the song. There is also no apparent acknowledgment of the differences in these cultures–chopsticks, a little geisha, and the arms of a Hindu goddess, huh? The video also features racist and sexist tropes, with Rihanna presented similarly to the dragon lady stereotype and one of the few Asian actors playing an evil ninja. And Rihanna’s eyes are accentuated with makeup to make them look more Asian.
Imagine if the roles were reversed and an Asian or Asian-American music star was wearing an afro and doing a bunch of disconnected stereotypically black things — maybe playing basketball, singing gospel in a church choir, and playing reggae in a dance club. It doesn’t sound good.
Another bad sign is the tweet that Rihanna sent a couple of months ago, apparently mocking Karrueche Tran, Chris Brown’s part-Vietnamese girlfriend. Rihanna tweeted a photo of a pack of rice cakes with sunglasses and hoop earrings on it and the text “Ima make u my bitch” — one word, ridiculous.
But maybe I’m looking at this in the wrong way. The allusions to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and overall plot of the video do match the lyrics. It’s a song about love and fighting, both if which are featured heavily in the video. According to members of Coldplay, the album as a whole is a saga of love between two characters, which could possibly explain the movie trailer format. And the song and video could be seen as a positive, multicultural move. Including elements from diverse cultures in music, when done tastefully and with innovation, can be exciting, not demeaning or discriminatory. Timbaland is a prime example of someone who combines diverse cultural elements into an innovative whole, although he could give more credit where it is due as well.
I really like Rihanna’s voice, and although her lyrics and public antics lead a lot to be desired, I enjoy some of her music. And Coldplay is a decent enough group, with songs that are sometimes decent, sometimes boring.
But in the end, I find the video more offensive than it is a respectful homage. The lack of significant involvement from an Asians, the mishmash of different cultures with no apparent explanation or relevance to the story, the broad tropes such as the dragon lady, and Rihanna’s recent tweet all lead me to believe that this is a step backward, not a path forward.
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Most eye make up is designed to accentuate the eyes in what could be deemed an ‘asian’ way – it’s called having a wing to your eyeliner and is a pretty irrelevant thing to bring up as this is how its done all around the world.
I don’t agree with calling the video ‘Princess of China’ and then adding in Japanese elements, (I’m glad the many arms were pointed out as not exclusively Hindu) but it should be brought up that the title doesn’t make sense in itself; you would have an empress not a princess in dynastic China. But I think you’re missing the point – its aim is not to portray a complete and accurate picture of traditional Chinese culture in a two minute pop music video. Surely if it were trying to do that it would be belittling the culture anyway? This is more of a dream-like amalgamation – hence the flying in the sky which isn’t ‘accurate’ no matter where you come from, and whilst some may be insulted that it reinforces stereotypes, others would feel proud to see their culture suddenly taking the limelight in a Western-world dominated music industry. Bollywood films often depict utterly hilarious stereotypical scenes set in England (apparently we still wear top hats and all go to Oxford) but I don’t find them insulting, quite the opposite I adore Bollywood films.
The fact of the matter is that of course this music video contains elements of generalisation and exotification but it is only until recently that Asia and especially China even had any real prevalence in the Western world in terms of cultural entertainment – 30 seconds to Mars were the first to shoot an American music video entirely in China and that was as recent as 2006! Even things like Gangnam Style, though actually referencing the most up market area in Seoul which doesn’t at all reflect the rest of South Korea and hence is also culturally inaccurate for the most part, IS important for the simple reason that even a stilted snippet of the culture has been exposed to the wider world. Many people have never heard spoken Korean or seen what the script looks like if it weren’t for this ridiculous song. It was even hailed by a UN secretary as ”a force for world peace”. More exposure means encouraging more cross-cultural interest and ultimately making people less ignorant and less xenophobic.
Also, if you’re worrying about female sexualisation in music videos, why on earth pick on this one? May I suggest something a little more genuinely ‘troubling’
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3DjPhYRtK0fBU%26oref%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.youtube.com%252Fresults%253Fsearch_query%253Dtwerk%2Blady%2B%26oq%3Dtwerk%2Blady%2B%26gs_l%3Dyoutube.3..0.92905.94523.0.95213.11.9.0.2.2.0.261.882.7j1j1.9.0…0.0…1ac._GjXprm2FVg%26has_verified%3D1
As a South Asian-American myself I am unbelievably tired of people crying racism over every tiny thing. Particularly when it pertains to art. First off, the title is a representation of the emotions and positions of the characters in the song (e.g. she feels like the princess of China), not a literal summary of everything in the song and video. The video is merely a series of cultural motifs blended together to create something which is visually appealing. It is not documentary on the true life of a Chinese princess and if music videos were that painfully predictable the industry would be in shambles.
Next off, who says Rihanna and Chris can’t dress and act like Asians? I dye my hair light brown and wear blue contacts- would you tell me that I can’t do that because I’m not white? The more limitations we create based on race, the more racism we create. In the words of Morgan Freeman “[If you want to get rid of racism then] stop talking about it”.
P.S. Your comment about “the lack of involvement from Asians” is atrocious and what I consider to be racist. Why should someone who is biologically Asian know anything more about Asia than a white person? I’m born and raised American and know nothing about Sri Lanka. Stop making assumptions about people based on their race.
THANK YOU! You get it! No one else seems to!
Despite Rihanna’s tweet, I wasn’t thinking geisha at all either, rather stylized Chinese. However, just to play the other side of the coin…full disclosure, I”m not a huge Rhianna or Coldplay fan…haven’t we seen this type of pulling from cultural elements in Madonna and Janet Jackson videos over the years? At what point is it hommage as opposed to stereotype? Does there have to be cohesive references to things? What’s wrong with mixing elements from different cultures if you truly like them and think they are beautiful? I’m seriously asking, as it’s a topic of interest in my own artwork. But also, for me, it’s a pop music video. Usually the highly produced ones are over the top visually, a kind of glossy moving fashion spread to keep you visually interested while the song plays. Not much more. All that said, I do understand if people feel their culture is being misrepresented and that proper credit isn’t given.
The problem is the fact that the writing is obviously Chinese. The samurai swords are Japanese. There are bits and pieces from random Asian cultures all over the video. You can’t mix all these random aspects of Asian culture that the west finds intriguing and call it “Chinese”.
Melody, thanks for raising these questions, especially since you’re an artist. In my opinion, it’s not inherently a problem to incorporate elements from a variety of cultures into an artistic piece. Does it have to be cohesive? I think it depends. When the only thing holding a bunch of elements together is race and the person or people creating it are not of that race, I think you’re stepping into dangerous territory. (Yes, there were some people of Asian backgrounds involved in the video, but they seem to be in peripheral roles.) In the specific case of this video, Rihanna’s character is very over the top. So for me, the fight scenes and love/relationship scenes between Rihanna and Chris Martin are ok by themselves and could have been the basis for a decent video. It’s really Rihanna in other parts of the video that are troubling — exocitized, sexualized, sprawled out on the couch, etc. It’s playing into certain stereotypes that have nothing to do with the song or the other parts of the video. Some of that stuff would be problematic even if it was Asian person in that role, if it was done in that same exact way. So cross cultural mixing is not inherently a problem, for me. But it was in this video, given the specific stereotypes that are presented, who created and starred in it, and the way it was put together overall.
Cindy, thanks for pointing that out. It seems every couple of days somebody sees something else that doesn’t make sense in this video.
All I can say is THANK YOU for this article. In my circles, a lot of attention is given to awareness of cultural misappropriation, but almost all of the conversation is focused around African and Native American cultures. When things like this video come up my friends are mostly silent, and that hurts a bit. It doesn’t shake my resolve to continue working against systemic racism – and I whole-heartedly agreed with another writer here, Scot Nakagawa, who said that anti-black racism is the fulcrum of white supremacy so I have no problem with most attention being focused there. But when things like this video come up, it is good to see non-Asian voices pointing out what is problematic about them so that it doesn’t feel like just me and a few other Asians whining about exotification. It’s good to know that we truly are all in this together.
And I could be wrong but I thought the gold fingertips are Thai. I saw elements of Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Thai culture in the video… and who knows what else. It did not feel to me that the video was making Asian cultures less foreign at all. It felt like over-the-top exotification. The overall effect, with elements of so many cultures mashed together, was other-worldly.
Actually I’ve seen chinese empresses wear those when chinese make their chinese dramas. My parents watch them all the time.
I really like the story. I think the editor should continue to work with this writer. His stories are very interesting. Keep them coming. I really like Rihanna, but never heard of this song with Coldplay.
This video and the images remind me of iona rozeal brown’s work in which she explores the African American fetish in Japan. This video, though, I believe suggests a fetish with Chinese culture (and possibly other Asian cultures).
eh.
Um.
This video is very, very appropriative, but the writer himself got several things wrong.
The first that jumped out at me was the whole “geisha hairstyle,” and…no. No, those aren’t “geisha” hairstyles at all. They are very stylized, but very stylized Chinese – watch a movie like “Curse of the Golden Flower” or period pieces, and you’ll see that look a lot more like those than the very distinct look geisha and maiko wear.
The other thing is, that “Hindu goddess” thing is also wrong — what she was doing was very similar to the “Dance of the Thousand Hand Bodhisattva,” (aka, Guan Yin – the Chinese Goddess of Mercy) which I linked to for the website. That dance, BTW, is performed by a troupe of deaf Chinese dancers.
This is very much appropriation soup, and there are a lot of issues with this (ie, the dragon lady thing, the superfluous “Asian” chord progressions, etc) but you lose a lot when you get your basic points wrong.
Thanks for the comment. I’m the editor here and fact-checked this story.
Here’s what we know. Bodhisattva is a Sanskit term that originated in India in the Mahayana Buddhism tradition, which I practice. A bodhisattva is person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings. The thousand armed bodhisattva is called in Sanskrit Avalokiteśvara.
Scholars disagree about the origins of Avalokiteśvara. The oldest painting of it appears in China, after China adopted Buddhism. Scholars believe that it came from India, because the Chinese references to it contain transliterations from Sanskrit and the Hindus had written of 1,000 armed gods in their vedas. Further, many scholars believe Indian Buddhists borrowed the idea of a 1,000 armed bodhisattva from Hinduism.
Thus a 1,000 armed God appears in Hinduism AND Buddhism in various Asian countries, including China. Here’s a source for you. Check out pages 48-50. http://books.google.bg/books?id=0kBSFcX-K4wC&lpg=PA43&dq=Arya%20Avalokite%C5%9Bvara&hl=bg&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false You can use Google to find more.
As for whether Rihanna is made up like a Japanese geisha or a traditional Chinese figure, I suppose that’s in the eyes of beholder. Her hair isn’t exactly like a geisha, nor exactly like the women in “Curse of the Golden Flower.” It would be interesting to hear her explain what she was going for.
Oh, I know about the Bodhisattva – Guan Yin/Kannon is one of my favorite Buddhist figures, actually, and I’ve read quite a bit about his/her (depending on country, the gender changes) history and depictions. I was just trying to keep it simple for the comments, heh, and since I live in Japan, I’ve seen a LOT of imagery of the 1000-Armed Kannon. It’s also why I pointed out that’s not a geisha hairstyle; I live in Kyoto and have actually seen geisha/maiko walking around in Gion – Rihanna’s hair was nothing like that, and her whole outfit was more a study in Orientalism. She herself referred to it in a tweet as “gangsta goth geisha,” but that doesn’t actually make it geisha (it was at best “Wa (Japanese)-style” goth look that’s been kinda popular in Japanese goth scene for the last five, ten years, but through a very exotifying, Western filter), and is actually fairly indicative of the problematic aspects of this whole video and the making of it.
All in all, this video plays out like someone took random scenes from a bunch of different wu xia movies and threw them in a blender, plus that “gangsta goth geisha”/dragon lady look and “Asian-y stuff we think looks cool” for kicks – I watched it basically going, “Oh, hey, that’s from House of Flying Daggers, that’s from Hero, that’s from Curse of the Golden Flower, that’s from clips they saw off youtube…” Basically, the whole thing is an appropriationy mess. It’s practically a full primer for showing what Orientalism is.
And thank you for your reply!
STG7, thanks for your comment. We decided to make a few edits. The top image was labelled incorrectly, so that is updated. When I originally wrote the story, I thought about adding “without the white face powder” somewhere to make it clear that Rihanna’s not fully out-fitted as geisha, which is why we just limited it to “hairstyle,” but I see your point. Rihanna referred to her look as “gangsta goth geisha,” and the hairstyle seemed to be at least close, so I used it. Regarding the Hindu goddess or Dance of the Thousand Hand Bodhisattva, I think they’re going for both, but I could be wrong. It’s hard to know exactly what they were thinking with this video.