While I appreciate your pointing out that “the point is to sell,” I have to encourage people to think beyond the market at some point.

The point of nearly everything in America is “to sell.” And I don’t know if I believe that Badu’s artistic integrity is jeopardized by a concept that essentially defines the culture she is striving to reach out to.

Why can’t it be that she is exploiting commercialism/capitilism in order to make her voice heard? It goes both ways, Anonymous.

“…is this what we have become?…” _Badu, Window Seat

The outcry about, and criticism of, this video begs the response –”YES!” This culture has become desensitized to EVERYTHING but sex. It leads the discussion, even while we are in the throes of two wars, a flat economy, record unemployment, the increasing economic underclass, the Haitian earthquake, AIDS, and everything else. What is the lead in the the news almost EVERYday? Who Jesse James is doing, and where Tiger’s lil thing has been. Sex brings out the adolescent, or the puritan, in many in the U.S. Although, since when has nudity been synonymous with sex? The human body, in all its similarities and variations, is a phenomenal, beautiful, thing.

In “Window Seat”, this talented, and very gifted Black
WOMAN is telling us something that is important to her. Her voice in this song is ripping. Rather than her hands, it is as if her voice tears off her clothes, laying her soul– not her body– bare. Towards the end, the onlookers–and this looks staged–seem to completely ignore her as she is shot and falls, in complete contrast to those who watch as she begins taking off her clothes. (There is even a rather creepy guy in the background picking them up as they fall.) And then her spoken word, intending to make us think, to feel, to be introspective and retrospective, comes.

It intrigues me a little that, to date, very few in the media have discussed the work itself, or what she says; most have focused on Badu having stripped on a public street and the need for her to be punished for it. Is walking nude on a public street worse than killing someone on a public street? Evidently, it is because this truly seems to be who we have become as a culture. Public murders happen in such regularity that it is no longer news. (I pause for my daily WTF? moment.)

This is a virtuosa performance from a woman who never fails to observe and participate in the human condition and, then present it provocative in ways that are interesting and illuminating.

Badu is an artist in every wonderful sense of the word, and an artist’s charge is not to make human beings feel good, or bad or safe or happy or sad. An artist’s charge is simply to make us feel

something.

In viewing this work, if you think that this is simply a publicity stunt or an attempt at self-promotion, then you have missed the point.

Thank you, AfroBella, for posting this discussion.

Peace
Etomi
(a SistaPoet)

Having said that though, I agree with Athena, Mom Noir & some of the others, the nudity muddies any message she was trying to put out there. And at the end of the day, it didn’t have anything really to do with the song.

Like a lot of us boho Black gyrls, I have always connected with Erykah, because I felt we were very similar about not giving a fig about fitting into whatever boxes society wants us, as Black females to fit in.

Which is why I raised an eyebrow when she started to disrobe. That her beauty was just put on display to the masses like that…it made me cringe for her. Because she’s too dope for these types of typical tactics. And I’m FAR from a prude, quite the opposite actually.

And unlike what someone else said, it does indeed become sexual as soon as she started showing her ass, whether that was her intention, or not. I am shaped very similar to Erykah, as I’m sure a lot of us are & I’m careful not to get too crazy with the tight or revealing outfits, because, as we know, it immediately becomes about that big ass or boobs or whatever, instead of about me the person & how dope I am on the inside, donk a donk aside.

I mean, she’s Erykah, & I don’t think she really gives a f@#k about what any of us thinks, but more than that, as mochachoc said, everyone, Erykah included, is trying SO hard to act like there was some deep message in there, & you know what, it just wasn’t that deep.

Artistic expression? Of course it was, she’s an artist & she was expressing, but beyond that, you’re reaching…

Anonymous’s post hit the nail on the head. It was what it was, an awesome self-promotion stunt to get her & her album release on everyone’s radar. Mission accomplished, Erykah, I ain’t mad at you. You got three kids to feed, LOL…

Welcome to the industry people! Before this, only us r&b & neo-soul people were familiar with her, now, with this trick, she’s gained notoriety among all types of people. Instant name recognition too. More power to her, I suppose, but let’s not go tripping all over ourselves trying to act like this video was so next-level,& mind-blowing (Note to all you Twitterers), just take it for what it was, entertainment from one of our loveliest, most talented artists, gratuitous nudity aside …

Peace!

the video reexamined…

http://www.erykahbadu.com/