ABSTRACT
When the music video for The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up was first released in 1997 it quickly became a point of sometimes heated debate amongst my peers. What most interested me about the varying opinions expressed over drinks and dinners, in powder rooms and classrooms, on street corners and buses, was that they reflected not only my own ambivalent and contradictory feelings about the video but also those of the public more generally. Whilst in a British poll the video, directed by Swedish filmmaker Jonas Åkerlund, was voted the sixty-first best pop video of all time, it was simultaneously condemned for its alleged advocating of violent and/or sexist behaviour, and either banned from being screened or relegated to late-night time spots. So what is it about the video that has provoked such strong responses? Whilst I’m unable to offer a definitive answer to this question, my own viewing experience may shed some light on the issue.
