Is Lena Dunham right about Kanye West's 'Famous'?
(CNN)On Friday night in Los Angeles, Kanye Westreleased the video to his latest single, "Famous." In it, the waxy likenesses of such celebrities as Anna Wintour and Donald Trump, Rihanna and her ex, Chris Brown, Caitlyn Jenner and Bill Cosby lay in apparent post-coital states in the folds of a giant bed.
West is positioned squarely in the middle of the group, with wife Kim Kardashian and her naked derriere on one side and a likeness of Taylor Swift, breasts and pubic area exposed, on the other.
West says each member of the cast of characters was chosen for having had some impact or influence on his own path to fame. The video's credits gave "special thanks" to every celebrity involved "for being famous."
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the singer said the song, and the video, is simply "a comment on fame in America." Vanity Fair dubbed it "thought-provoking"--elsewhere it was called"voyeuristic" and "a feat of magic."
In the words of actress and writer Lena Dunham, however, it's "sickening."
In a Facebook post Monday night, the "Girls" creator-star called the "Famous" video "one of the more disturbing 'artistic' efforts in recent memory," a dangerous reinforcement of rape culture and non-consent. "The prone, unconscious, waxy bodies of famous women, twisted like they've been drugged and chucked aside at a rager...," she writes. "It gives me such a sickening sense of dis-ease."
The video, she writes, is "informed and inspired by the aspects of our culture that make women feel unsafe even in their own beds, in their own bodies," made her feel "sad and unsafe and worried."
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