If you’re trying to get your head around why an image of 12 of the most famous people in the world laying naked in bed together has been invading your social media feeds, you can thank Kanye West.
Over the weekend, Kanye released the video for his already controversial song Famous - the one with the lyric that refers to Taylor Swift as a bitch, says they might still have sex and claims that Kanye made her famous, they still have beef about it – and Lena Dunham (best pal and member of Swifty's coveted girl squad), really isn’t okay with it.
In the video you’ll see wax figures that eerily resemble celebs such as Chris Brown, Rihanna, Donald Trump, Anna Wintour and Caitlyn Jenner. And laying at either side of Kanye himself is wife Kim Kardashian West and, yep, you guessed it, Taylor Swift.
In an essay called Peeking From Between My Fingers posted to her Facebook page, Lena described the video as ‘one of the more disturbing “artistic” efforts in recent memory’.
Lena went on to write: ‘Now I have to see the prone, unconscious, waxy bodies of famous women, twisted like they’ve been drugged and chucked aside at a rager? It gives me such a sickening sense of dis-ease.’
We all know that Kanye has a reputation for turning heads and causing a stir (see: intention to run for President and declairing bankruptcy on Twitter and asking Mark Zuckerburg for $53 million), but it’s clear that Lena feels this video pushes sensitive boundaries that really don’t sit well with her.
Referencing the Brock Turner case and the ongoing investigation of Bill Crosby (who is also depicted in the video), Lena took care to address that the video could be seen to highlight ‘aspects of our culture that make women feel unsafe even in their own beds, in their own bodies.’
She added: ‘I don’t have a hip cool reaction, because seeing a woman I love like Taylor Swift (f–k that one hurt to look at, I couldn’t look), a woman I admire like Rihanna or Anna [Wintour], 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.’
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Kanye mentioned that it was important to him to get the go ahead from his wife Kim before the video went out, but it doesn’t look like she’s publically said anything about it since it was released to the Tidal-sphere.
Kanye also clarified that the video isn’t ‘in support or anti any of the [people in the video]’, but rather a ‘comment on fame’. But let’s not forget that shortly after the video was put out, Kanye tweeted (and deleted) ‘'Can somebody sue me already #I'llwait’. Confusing, right? It does feel a bit like Kanye was hoping for a bigger reaction (i.e. to be sued?) from the celebrities he chose to feature in his video. And although there have been a couple of statements made to confirm that they are in fact wax statues rather than the naked celebrities themselves - Chris Brown described the video as 'CRAZY' in an Instagram post, and George W. Bush's people told TMZ he's in 'better shape' in real life, thank you very much - there hasn't been much else just yet. But, it's probably safe to say that none of us will ever truly know what Kanye was actually hoping for with this one.
The video was apparently inspired by a painting by Vincent Desiderio, which similarly shows people sleeping next to eachother with little or no clothes on. And although Lena does really appreciate that ‘art's job is to make us think in ways that aren't always tidy or comfortable’, for her, ‘this feels different’.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.