Decider After Dark

Lena Dunham Blasts Kanye West For His “Disturbing” And “Sickening” Video Of ‘Famous’ Nude Celebrities

When Kanye West’s latest album, The Life of Pablo, dropped back in February, you might remember that he received a lot of attention for one controversial lyric in his song “Famous”: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.” In the wake of the song’s (somehow even more controversial!) video premiering on Tidal late last week, Lena Dunham has responded, and, well, she’s not thrilled about what it appears to be saying about women.

The video, which pays homage to artist Vincent Desiderio’s Sleep, shows the naked likenesses of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Caitlyn Jenner, Bill Cosby, Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump, among others, lying in a bed with Kanye himself. While West has assured the public that the video is a “comment on fame,” he also said in a now-deleted tweet, “Can somebody sue me already #I’llwait,” so who really knows if West’s intention really was to make a rousing commentary on celebrity culture or… if he really was just trying to stir the pot. Either way, Dunham has decided to publicly speak out about her opposition to the whole ordeal. In a post on her Facebook page, Dunham calls the video “one of the more disturbing “artistic” efforts in recent memory.” Yikes.

Dunham makes reference to the Brock Turner case, noting that this is happening at the same time Turner “is getting off with a light tap for raping an unconscious woman and photographing her breasts for a group chat.” She goes on to say that her discomfort lies in seeing the unconscious forms of famous women being exploited on film, as if they’d been “drugged and chucked aside at a rager.”

A noted advocate for body positivity in the media, Dunham recognizes that the point of art is often to challenge and make people uncomfortable, even specifically noting that having Bill Cosby in a bed with Donald Trump is supposed to make “some kind of statement,” and that she’s “probably being trolled on a super high level.” She is certainly well-versed in the specific brand of controversy getting nude on camera can inspire, but the nude figures represented in West’s video take on a vastly different meaning than that of an episode of Girls, and Dunham agrees. Her difficulty with the video lies in what it says about women, and how teenage girls will interpret that message. She added:

“[S]eeing a woman I love like Taylor Swift (fuck that one hurt to look at, I couldn’t look), a woman I admire like Rihanna or Anna, reduced to a pair of waxy breasts made by some special effects guy in the Valley, it makes me feel sad and unsafe and worried for the teenage girls who watch this and may not understand that grainy roving camera as the stuff of snuff films.”

Dunham’s decision to air her grievances was based around her disappointment in the lack of media coverage on this particular aspect of the video. She finishes her post by reiterating her admiration for West, and encouraging him to keep making statements with his art, but also assures both us and him that she will not be privy to it “if it feels informed and inspired by the aspects of our culture that make women feel unsafe even in their own beds, in their own bodies.” Watch an excerpt of the very NSFW “Famous” video below: