There was a time when anything that Britney Spears did was controversial: perform a strip-tease, dance with a snake, wear nothing but crystals/a red leather catsuit/nothing, and of course make out with a woman. Nowadays, that envelope is pretty hard to push. In the last couple of months we've seen videos featuring nudity, strippers, giant bears (?), hot dogs (?), and lots of tongue. And that's just from Miley Cyrus. Let's not even talk about Rihanna's booty shaking "Pout It Up" video.
We've seen it all it seems, so when Britney dropped her "Work Bitch" video featuring whips, chains, bondage, and sharks (!) the general reaction wasn't "Oh My God," it was "Oh." It's a great video and the response has been positive, but in a world in which twerking is the norm it just can't shock us.
Go back to the late 90s when Prodigy dropped their video for "Smack My Bitch Up." That video featured a first-person look at what we think is a guy doing drugs, getting drunk, abusing women (and men), and finally getting laid. Turns out it was a woman doing all that. It was so controversial that it could only air late at night on MTV. Today, if you just blurred out the boobs, you could air that in the middle of the day.
Therefore, how do you shock? How do you push the envelope? Britney is whipping girls in her video and she has one girl with a Beats Boombox in her mouth like a ball-gag. Yet, there's no outrage, no one crying foul. Maybe her and director Ben Mor didn't intend to shock anyone. Maybe they both know that the envelope has been pushed so far that it's not even worth trying.
Obviously, we've come along way since Prodigy asked us to smack our bitch up. We can see things on the Internet we never could: sex, blood, you name it, it's out there. So, Britney whipping some girl on the ass is pretty tame. In fact, we've pushed the envelope so far that the only way to shock is to not shock at all. In that regard, maybe "Work Bitch" is shocking.
Congrats Britney, you found a new way to push that envelope.
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