She can’t watch! Lena Dunham slammed Kanye West’s “Famous” music video, calling it “one of the most disturbing ‘artistic’ efforts in recent memory.” In her critique, posted to Facebook on Monday, June 27, she also recalled how it “hurt to look at” the naked wax figure of her close friend Taylor Swift.
The controversial video, which debuted on Friday, June 24, at the Forum in Los Angeles, depicts the rapper, 39, naked in bed next to his wife, Kim Kardashian, and 10 more nude celebrity wax figures — George W. Bush, Anna Wintour, Donald Trump, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Taylor Swift, Kardashian’s sex tape partner Ray J, West’s ex-girlfriend Amber Rose, Caitlyn Jenner and Bill Cosby.
The Girls actress, 30, began by saying that she usually “admires” West and the Kardashian family, but she found the nude scene — which re-creates Vincent Desiderio’s “Sleep” painting — horribly disrespectful. “Let’s break it down: at the same time Brock Turner is getting off with a light tap for raping an unconscious woman and photographing her breasts for a group chat … While Bill Cosby’s crimes are still being uncovered and understood as traumas for the women he assaulted but also massive bruises to our national consciousness … 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?” she wrote on Facebook. “It gives me such a sickening sense of dis-ease.”
Dunham explained that while she appreciates nudity in art and projects that push the boundaries (she frequently appears in nude scenes on HBO’s Girls), “this feels different” and crosses a line. “I know that there’s a hipper or cooler reaction to have than the one I’m currently having,” she wrote. “But guess what? 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, 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.”
“Here’s the thing, Kanye: you’re cool,” she concluded. “Make a statement on fame and privacy and the Illuminati or whatever is on your mind! But I can’t watch it, don’t want to watch 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.”
As Us Weekly previously reported, only a few of the dozen stars featured in the infamous video have spoken out publicly about it. “Why I gotta have the plumbers butt/crack showing WAX figure?” Brown joked of his likeness, which was tangled between ex Rihanna and Swift. “This n–ga KANYE CRAZY, talented, but crazy.”
Ray J said that his wax figure’s cameo has caused problems with his fiancée, Princess Love. “Man, I’m just trying to stay positive,” the rapper told Entertainment Tonight. “I’m engaged. My marriage is all messed up ’cause of craziness. I’m not part of nothing crazy. I walk down a good path. My fiancée tripping. It’s all bad in my world, and that ain’t cool.”
An aide for the former U.S. president simply said, “That’s not him.” Reps for Cosby, Wintour and Jenner had no comment. The other stars have yet to respond to the talked-about video.
The Yeezy designer knew the film would be controversial and the day after its debut wrote in a since-deleted tweet, “Can somebody sue me already #I’llwait.”
Read Dunham’s full Facebook post here. West’s full “Famous” music video is available to stream on Tidal.
