Rihanna’s Russian Roulette Video
The wait is finally over, the music video for Rihanna’s first single Russian Roulette from the Rated R album, was released on German TV and on NBC’s 20/20 program today. The video for the single is just as brooding as the song itself. The singer is seen drowning, being shot, imprisoned, and playing the russian roulette with another man (no it’s not Chris Bown but you can make your own judgements from the video above.)
Anthony Mandler directed the video, who’s also behind Rihanna’s Wait Your Turn. Mandler thought of the video as a perfect metaphorical depiction of Rihanna’s very public life.
“I think you can’t effect change unless you’re willing to take a risk,” he said. “You can’t get people to pay attention and understand unless you’re willing to push the limit and try new things. The song, this situation, everything is so frontloaded with so much gossip and so much media coverage and so many emotions and stories that if you don’t try to do something that is poetic and layered in symbolism, then you’re either running from the truth or you’re being too obvious with it,” said Mandler(1).
So, there’s plenty of imagery in the video that seems influenced by the February 8th altercation with Chris Brown, but it’s not literal, rather just a subplot.
In last week’s 20/20 interview Rihanna discussed her relationship with Brown:
“The more in love we became, the more dangerous we’d become for each other, equally as dangerous.”
Rated R comes out on November 23rd.
What do you think of the video?
