Love the Way You Lie

“Just gonna stand there/And watch me burn/But that’s alright/Because I like/The way it hurts/Just gonna stand there/And hear me cry/But that’s alright/Because I love/The way you lie” – lyrics from “Love the Way You Lie” by Eminem and Rihanna

Is the new video for the song “Love the Way You Lie” by Eminem and Rihanna glamorizing domestic violence or realistically portraying what those relationships can be like?

With something like 1000 women being killed from domestic violence each year, one thing is for sure: this is not a light topic. People can get heated pretty easily when you are talking about abusive relationships.  However, the song is already topping the charts and getting a lot of YouTube play and leaving a lot of people, me included, left wondering if the song is sending the wrong message.

Megan Fox stars in the video alongside Dominic Monaghan (Fox donated her fee to an abuse shelter). The video follows the couple’s tumultuous relationship cycle. One minute they are fighting and she is leaving, while he tries to stop her by being violent, and in the next moment they are engaged in some intense tonsil hockey. The rest of the video is much the same with the couple going through what looks like cycles of abuse: in one frame he is hitting her and throwing her around and in the next he is apologizing with a stuffed bear and everything is good again.

Throughout the video you see Eminem in a peaceful field of grass rapping about how he “didn’t mean it” but would do it again and Rihanna in front of a burning house singing about how she “likes the way it hurts” and “loves the way you lie.”

It’s all a bit confusing. I have read some blogs that say this is obviously Eminem and Rihanna’s way of saying that these relationships are bad and should end sooner. I have seen other articles that think because you have all these pretty people being shot beautifully that it is “glamorizing” domestic violence.

As for her part, Rihanna was quoted on Access Hollywood saying:

“It just was authentic. It was real,” Rihanna continued. “It was believable for us to do a record like that, but it was also something that needed to be done and the way he did it was so clever. He pretty much just broke down the cycle of domestic violence and it’s something that a lot people don’t have a lot of insight on, so this song is a really, really powerful song and it touches a lot of people.”

As for me I would have to agree with Rihanna as well as a writer for BUST Magazine, that the video shows the relationship for what it is. While I still don’t know what to think about Rihanna’s lyrics, I liked how the video illustrated what the cycle of abuse can look like.

As with almost anything that Rihanna or Eminem do, the song and its video are getting lots of attention and maybe that’s good enough. All the attention is certainly opening up conversations about abuse and what domestic violence looks like from the inside and what each person goes through. “Love the Way You Lie” gives an unabashed look at domestic violence, right or wrong, it’s out there and getting people talking.  Let us know what you think after watching the video.