Just ask Rose McGowan and you’ll get a no minced words response about Robert Rodriguez and any “feminist” propensities he has. In fact, directing “Rain On Me” feels in some way like an attempt at reparations for past wrong-doings. Including repeatedly telling McGowan, “I had you at your ripest.” As he has Ariana Grande but not Lady Gaga (now over thirty, after all) in his video interpretation of a song about empowerment and overcoming hardships and travails that people anywhere outside of the U.S. probably have a better understanding of. Because Lady Gaga is known for her love of the Quentin Tarantino aesthetic (just watch the video for “Telephone” again), tapping Rodriguez to direct “Rain On Me” kind of makes sense, though perhaps it would have more so if this was pre-2017 and literally every choice related to who an artist works with wasn’t rife with meaning and the potential for maligning. Which is perhaps why Gaga was even more cavalier, pre-2017, in choosing to partake of a role in 2013’s Machete Kills and 2014’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (so much killing). After all, these were his visions anyway, and had nothing to do with her own “feminist brand”–n’est-ce pas? She was but a willing vessel for his art.
In her art of the moment, however, Gaga carries forth with her ironic directorial selection for a song about overcoming strife, and de facto, so does Grande. In the end, the two probably just wanted to look “edgy,” “tough.” Even if they could have had the sky rain down knives without Rodriguez orchestrating it. What’s more, Gaga is also the same pop star who worked with R. Kelly at a time when it was already well-known the extent of his abuse of younger women, which was established long ago when he was capitalizing on his Svengali tendencies as Aaliyah’s “mentor.” This was, of course, on 2013’s “Do What U Want,” the single’s cover image shot by fellow pedo Terry Richardson (in addition to the planned video for it filmed by him before being scrapped, likely because Gaga briefly came to her senses about how scandalous it would be). That image being, what else, Gaga’s ass bedecked in a floral thong. Because, yeah, “Do what you want with my body.” That mantra quickly getting ickier with each passing minute that the song was released into the world with R. Kelly attached to it. Hence, Gaga continued her long-standing tradition of calling upon women with a higher caliber of vocal talent to her songs thanks to a reworking from Christina Aguilera. This after claiming, “I have always been an R. Kelly fan and actually it is like an epic pastime in the Haus of Gaga that we just get fucked up and play R. Kelly. This is a real R&B song and I [said ‘I] have to call the king of R&B and I need his blessing.’ It was a mutual love.”
How quickly mutual love goes out the window when revelations of anti-feminist comportment become too unavoidable to ignore. In Rodriguez’s case, if his films weren’t enough of an example, any other evidence never mounted in a “viable enough” way to brand him as someone women ought to steer clear of if they wanted to express a message of female empowerment in their own work. Like Tarantino, he survived the guilty by association effect of being so ensconced with Harvey Weinstein and his producing clout.
McGowan, meanwhile, stated that she told Rodriguez about the abuse and he did nothing to help stop Weinstein’s madness, even in something as small as refusing to work with him. After all, this was at a time when Weinstein was backing the Tarantino/Rodriguez joint effort that was 2007’s Grindhouse. Starring as a one-legged stripper (sorry you didn’t think of that first, Lana) in Rodriguez’s portion of the double feature, Planet Terror, McGowan felt that Rodriguez ultimately manipulated what she told him about Weinstein to get the best scene out of her. As written in a 2018 Vanity Fair article centered on the release of McGowan’s memoir, Brave, Evgenia Peretz wrote,”McGowan fell hard and fast, trusting Rodriguez enough to tell him about her experience with Weinstein. He proceeded to use the knowledge against her, she claims, as a tool for mind games, starting with a scene in which Tarantino, playing a character in his movie, attacks McGowan’s character… In what McGowan interpreted as the ultimate act of cruelty, Rodriguez ‘sold our film to my monster.’”
And Gaga and Grande now continue to sell Rodriguez’ played out brand of machismo to their fans. It wouldn’t be so hypocritical if Gaga in particular didn’t always “passionately” style herself as being hyper-sensitive to women who have endured abuse, whether physical or verbal. This is the same pop juggernaut who has created a side gig out of publicly speaking against feminine subjugation–one of the zeniths of that being rape–manifested to its full extent on the 2015 single, “Til It Happens To You,” released in promotion of The Hunting Ground, a documentary about sexual abuse on college campuses. So it is that any sense of female empowerment from seeing Gaga and Grande stabbed via the orchestration of Rodriguez seems to undercuttingly negate the core theme of the track. Alas, no one gives a shit. Because Lady G and Ariana are dancing around in form-fitting, shiny-colored latex and isn’t it so cute and bold? Oh my god stop thinking about the man behind the visuals! Stawwwp! You’re being such a Debbie Downer ruining my TikTok video!
