Rihan­na X Har­mo­ny Korine is a match made in music video heaven

Vide­ol­o­gy is a new col­umn that looks at music videos through the lens of movies while explor­ing the crossover between the two mediums.

With smoke gen­tly stream­ing from her mouth and nos­trils and dol­lar bills rain­ing down, it makes sense that the intox­i­cat­ing (slight­ly NSFW) video for Rihanna’s ​‘Need­ed Me’ was direct­ed by Amer­i­can indie provo­ca­teur Har­mo­ny Korine.

His hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, height­ened-real­i­ty style is per­fect­ly suit­ed to the medi­um (wasn’t Spring Break­ers essen­tial­ly an extend­ed music video/​weed trip?) and the sub­ject of this piece is well-trod­den for both direc­tor and star: Rihan­na has played venge­ful before in ​‘Bitch Bet­ter Have My Mon­ey’ while Korine pre­vi­ous­ly toyed with weaponised fem­i­nin­i­ty in Spring Break­ers.

‘Need­ed Me’ is anoth­er curi­ous entry into Rihanna’s videog­ra­phy, and she is again seen assert­ing her dom­i­nance and wom­an­hood – this time in a bil­low­ing see-through out­fit with a hand­gun. But, unlike her con­tem­po­rary, Bey­on­cé, Rihan­na takes advan­tage of famil­iar tropes asso­ci­at­ed with both dan­ger­ous fem­i­nin­i­ty (Bar­bara Stan­wyck in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty) and black fem­i­nin­i­ty (Pam Gri­er in Coffy) by reap­pro­pri­at­ing them for her own gain. She stands out in the crowd at the strip club, where every­one else is bathed in crim­son light, seduced by nar­cotics and super­fi­cial plea­sures. We’re left in no doubt that she has total control. 

Korine’s rou­tine­ly jux­ta­pose flash­es of beau­ty and grotes­querie, and his com­mer­cial and music video work is in many ways a nat­ur­al exten­sion of the exper­i­men­tal style and core themes asso­ci­at­ed with his fea­ture films. His Thor­tons ad demon­strates his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with time and tem­po­ral­i­ty in an atyp­i­cal­ly charm­ing man­ner, while his video for Bon­nie ​“Prince” Billy’s ​‘No More Work­horse Blues’ sees his trade­mark provo­ca­tion rear its head, with the band’s mem­bers don­ning black­face, and one hang­ing from a tree. 

It’s a fit­ting fol­low-up to ​‘Bitch Bet­ter Have My Mon­ey’, yet while that short con­cen­trat­ed on the rela­tion­ship between black wealth and white priv­i­lege, this one exam­ines the rela­tion­ship between black female pow­er and wealth and black male pow­er and wealth. Although Korine has long shown an inter­est in the lives of mar­gin­alised peo­ple, his han­dling of race can be messy. He looks to have met his match in Rihan­na; star­ing straight down the cam­era, gun in hand, dar­ing you to cross her.