Welcome to Stephanie Goller's regular entertainment blog, covering a variety of topics from culture and TV to music and film. You can share your thought's with Stephanie by commenting at the bottom of this page. This week she looks at Rihanna's new video, We Found Love.
The four words to describe this visual story line are bizarre, brilliant and at times brutally honest.
Rihanna demonstrates the epitome of a modern day romance in a way that captures and holds the viewers’ attention throughout the video. The characters seem to go through an emotional roller coaster which the target audience can easily associate with. The ideas and values proposed are unique but to a certain extent also scandalous and abrupt; the images are unconventional in many ways.
This also applies to the selection of the male character role. Dudley O'Shaughnessy is a boxer and model from East London who is said to be smitten with the singer from the moment they met.
From the content of the video it may be established that aspects of Rihannas’ past have influenced the storyline. For instance, the male actor has a certain resemblance with her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown who previously thought to be in a similar violent relationship with her.
The video opens on a montage of images with a monologue like voiceover that sets the scene; this is very unusual and a rare technique used to draw the audiences’ attention in further by playing with emotions and feelings which might be familiar to the viewer.
Throughout the video, there is a sharp juxtaposition of ideas, one being the love, romance and intimacy the couple share, and the other being the much more sinister side that this can bring, such as drug abuse and emotional manipulation.
All in all, I felt that there was just that ‘something’ which made me want to watch it over and over again; a brilliant display of a modern day relationship and the implications that come with trying to make it work.
