Music Video Breakdown: Rihanna’s “S&M” Features Many Fetishes

Once again, it’s time for me to take a mainstream music video and break it down from a fetish standpoint.

This time, I picked an obvious choice:  Rihanna’s “S&M”.  Since I don’t normally listen to pop music, I heard this song for the first time just a few months ago.  I was shocked to hear the lyrics “Sticks and stones may break my bones/but chains and whips excite me” on mainstream radio.  Of course in the fetish community, chains and whips are standard fair, but a pop diva singing about such dark accoutrements?  I decided to check out the video to see how she depicted her love for “S&M”.

In my research, I read several blog posts online, mostly coming from “mom bloggers” rather than “sex bloggers”, in which people are shocked and mortified at the imagery in Rihanna’s video.  They talk about how terrible and confusing it must be for children to see such a distasteful video, and how the youth of today has no hope.  Coming from my point of view, it all seems pretty light and playful to me.  I don’t think kids would really understand what they are seeing.  Everything is so colorful and quick, so you really have to pause the video every couple of frames to really see what is going on, and even then it just looks like they are all just having fun and being silly at a party.

The video starts out with members of the press dominating Rihanna.  They pull her through a door kicking and fighting and tape her to the wall with electrical tape and plastic wrap.  This reminds me of a scene you might see take place during a performance at a local fetish club.  It is flashy and dramatic, and there is no real sense of danger.   Some of the reporters are shown with gag balls in their mouths.  Although Rihanna appears to be in a submissive state, the fact that they are wearing gag balls in their mouths, showing that she is still in control as they nod along to her lyrics in agreement.  This scene depicts bondage, S & M, asphyxiation fetish, and a little role-play.

The next scene is a little kinkier, although still bubblegum cute.  Rihanna struts out of a suburban home looking absolutely fierce in a translucent latex outfit.  While latex clothing is extremely popular among fetishists, it has gotten a lot more common in recent years, since Lady Gaga and Katy Perry are often scene wearing the material.  What might surprise most viewers is what she is seen doing.  She is seen walking a man who is crawling on all fours wearing a dog harness.  He pants and pees on a fire hydrant, then he lays on his back while Rihanna scratches his belly.  This is commonly known as “petplay” which is animal role-play and not to be confused as bestiality.  Petplay is a form of D/s (Domination/submission) role-play in which one person depicts the owner (dominant), and the other is the pet (submissive).  Owners enjoy being in control, while pets enjoy the pampering and the obedience.  Doggy role-play is a common form of petplay, but there is also kittenplay, ponyplay, and many, many others.  The important thing to remember is that this form of roleplay isn’t always sexual, but for the purposes of this video we’ll assume that it is sexual as depicted in this scene.  At other points in the video you see people wearing animal masks, ears, and tails, and which is seen more as the furry fetish than petplay.

At the video’s halfway point, Rihanna is again seen in a sexy pink latex dominatrix outfit with a matching whip.  She has several cameras all pointed at her (presumably webcams), and she is seductively eating from a bowl of candy.  The camera moves and it is revealed that she has several members of the press tied up in her dungeon.  They are bonded with what appears to be PVC tape (which is very similar to the Liberator Erotic Bonding Tape) and restrained against the wall, chairs, and a bed mattress.  She humiliates one of them (common in BDSM practice) by throwing her bowl of candy on him in front of the cameras for her voyeuristic audience.  She also whips her submissives and even kisses one woman on the mouth.

The following scene has Rihanna in Shibari, or Japanese ropes bondage.  Her outfit is very cartoonish and cute, and she appears to be struggling to become freed from her restraints, but she is singing “I like it”, so there is no danger involved.  She is enjoying herself, she is fully dressed, and she looks amazing.

Then, as if the scenes were supposed to become more colorful and outlandish as the video goes on, Rihanna is seen wearing a colorful latex dress while laying seductively on a desk and is surrounded by clowns (still members of the press) and balloon animals!  This couldn’t be representing anything other than clown fetish, which is a sexual affinity towards clowns.  This fetish is more rare than the others mentioned previously, to the point where I couldn’t find a good generic reference link.  (There were plenty of porn hits though…)  However, even though this fetish is somewhat extreme, the clowns are completely non-threatening, and goof around with each other rather than interact with Rihanna.  One female clown can be seen tapping Rihanna on the butt with a heart-shaped paddle, but you have to really be looking to see this.

The last scenes in the video all point to food fetish.  Rihanna wears a Carmen Miranda-esque headpiece while seductively eating a banana.  Then she eats strawberries with cream and ice cream, licking her fingers and the food with incredible lust.  Many people are turned on by food, whether it is a specific aphrodisiac or for romance, and this scene is probably one of the least threatening scenes to vanillas (i.e. non-fetishists) in the video.  Food was also a dominant theme in Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” video, and it’s not like Rihanna was using a cucumber “down there”, like many food fetishists are known to do.

Other fetish themes and elements found in the video include the use of sexy lingerie, corsets, studded leather clothing, and other fetish wear.  Sex toys are represented by a blow-up doll found in the in-between “party” segments of the video.

All in all, I think this video is cute and fun.  I honestly would have liked it better if it was more extreme, but for mainstream audiences I think Rihanna did a great job incorporating many different types of fetish and BDSM lifestyle into her video.  It was somewhat a mixture between Katy Perry and Lady Gaga’s videos, with Katy Perry being on the cute side and Lady Gaga favoring the more extreme.  Still, it really makes me wonder how Rihanna would fit it at a local fetish party.  Maybe we can convince her to show up at the next Liberator sponsored fetish party!  (Hey, I can dream, can’t I?)