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Debate Question

What are your thoughts on this glamourised re-enactment of rape?

I was watching a lady gaga documentary, listening to a bit of jimi hendrix one morning, eating my corn-flakes...When suddenly i nearly spat it out. In this documentary, gaga claims that in the music video for "Bad romance", that she is "Kidnapped to be a sex-slave for the mafia" Wait a sec--- what? I had two thoughts on my mind after she revealed that-
1. It definatly isn't anything like my knowledge of rape. Gaga spends the video in diamonds, looking ravishing, glamourishing, almost advertising rape. I know for a fact, that rape is much more dark and devastating, and it is nothing like her "vision" of it.
2. I am offended. She obviously doesn't know anything about the subject, and is just shocking for the sake of shoking. Ok, you probably thinking this whole question is ridiculous, and that it's just a video that i shouldn't take seriously. But i am very sensitive to this subject, after seeing how it can tear a family and a person apart. What is she going to do in her next video? In she going to be part of the holocaust and cash will come out of the gas showers? can we predict that she's going to release a video in which animal abuse is glorifyied with sparkly pink whips? What do you think? Do you think it's offencive? or is it just a video that we shouldn't take seriously?
 pandawinx posted over a year ago
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Debate Answers

cassie-1-2-3 said:
I don't think it's glamorized at all.

The song is called "Bad Roance"

I would understand what you're saying if she looked happy and was smiling throughout the video, but she's not.

She's crying, she caught on fire, she had drinks forced down her throat, she was attacked, her clothes were torn off her body to reveal a diamond outfit she was obviously ashamed by (which later on explodes all around her) and forced to dance for an audience, surrounded by creepy people dressed in bodysuites who sleep in coffins. She's pretty much whithering in a cage with strange stones comming out of her pine. I don't think many people would watch the video and particularly want to be in that situation.

Unless you believe being in a white room = glamor, I don't see it at all.

(Here's the video, becuase it should have been included with the question)
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posted over a year ago 
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And, she kills him in the end.
cassie-1-2-3 posted over a year ago
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Great answer.
Cinders posted over a year ago
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If the song was set to a slower beat, and the video took place in a darker room, it would be a obviously creepy and disturbing, and i don't think you'd have the same exact views of it. But it's not becuase the ability to analyse and interpret is a good thing to have.
cassie-1-2-3 posted over a year ago
bri-marie said:
We must have watched two very separate videos. In the one I watched, the singers, dancers, people who were just sitting/standing around, costumes, props, and song didn't glamorize rape or the sex-slave trade. At all.

EDIT: also, pandawinx, I've read your comments on Cinders' and cassie's answers. link is a fact sheet all about sex trafficking. I found these little snippets particularly useful to your arguments:
Sex traffickers use a variety of methods to “condition” their victims including starvation, confinement, beatings, physical abuse, rape, gang rape, threats of violence to the victims and the victims’ families, forced drug use and the threat of shaming their victims by revealing their activities to their family and their families’ friends.
(...)
Victims may also suffer from traumatic bonding – a form of coercive control in which the perpetrator instills in the victim fear as well as gratitude for being allowed to live.
(...)
Victims of trafficking are forced into various forms of commercial sexual exploitation including prostitution, pornography, stripping, live-sex shows, mail-order brides, military prostitution and sex tourism.

As for the romance thing....
link and link are both instances where the abused or kidnapped victim feel empathy and positive feelings toward their abusers/kidnappers. These feelings can range anywhere from empathy, compassion, friendship, and even love.
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posted over a year ago 
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Hmm...Oddly enough, you seem a lot more about the video than the person who starred in it, who clearly stated that the video is about a kidnapped sex slave. Funny that,
pandawinx posted over a year ago
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Here, I'll change my answer to be a little more speciic. You see I thought my "the video" was a general statement that included singers, dancers, and costumes.
bri-marie posted over a year ago
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Excellent stats. I think it's important to distinguish between sex trafficking and other rape - though all are aweful. There are some differences in the victimization.
Cinders posted over a year ago
Cinders said:
I am not a Gaga Monster, and I no longer have cable or even public access television, so I honestly had never seen the Bad Romance video. But I youtubed it, with that perspective in mind, and actually saw lots of dark, violent undertones in the choreography. Times when she looked embarrassed, ashamed even, to dance before those men. Times when she was angry and, eventually, murderous as witnessed in the scene when she wore the bear rug and the bed lit on fire, with that very Halloween-y epilogue. I'm not a Gaga fan, like I said, but I see where she was coming from, and how she was trying to be a symbol of defiance. In many ways, she succeeds, just by being Gaga.

Additionally, when it comes to human trafficking, women and girls are dressed up in all sorts of things to make them look desirable to buyers - including fake jewels and lingerie.
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posted over a year ago 
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And now I notice Cassie has already posted the video, and made a brilliant answer, which would have saved me time for sure.
Cinders posted over a year ago
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All
pandawinx posted over a year ago
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i know is, hlaf the stuff that happened in the video would never of happened in real life- like her dancing for the sex-sellers--- they just drug you and rape you when your asleep, it's not like a strip club! secondly, rapists are perfectly happy to rape whoevers around. they ain't picky.
pandawinx posted over a year ago
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Sex traffickers make their victims strip all the time. As I mentioned, they need to sell their product. As sick as that sound, it's how they see it. If Gaga said she was kidnapped by an organized crime syndicate, it wasn't just a drive-by rape, but a repeated victimization of a sex slave, which includes being forced into humiliating and even elaborate costumes, as well as isolation (seen in the video) and othe exploitations. Lastly - the video is allegory, not literal. A lot of the things in it are symbolic, and that's where the darkness lies.
Cinders posted over a year ago
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