She’s harmlessly raised a few eyebrows since Chris Brown assaulted her back in 2009 (think handgun tattoos), but it seems R&B artist Rihanna might have crossed a line, this time.

BET and MTV began playing the music video for her new single, “Man Down,” this past Wednesday, and advocacy groups like the Parents Advocacy Council, Enough is Enough, and Industry Ears are asking Viacom to pull the video from airwaves.

Why?

According to Rolling Stone, the video depicts Rihanna “gunning down a man in cold blood as payback for an implied sexual assault” (you can’t blame the critics for interpreting such a scene).

Rihanna, on the other hand, says that both the video and the song are about “a woman struggling with guilt over accidentally murdering a man [and] is meant to encourage female empowerment” (which doesn’t even make sense).

(See the video after the jump.)

Watch Rihanna’s New “Man Down” Video

I decided to check out the video myself (because, hey, when people start saying Rihanna’s made a video that encourages “dangerous revenge fantasy,” you need to know what you’re dealing with, here), and honestly…

…there’s very little about the song and video that suggest guilt. There’s a lyric here and there about not being able to sleep at night, etc. and so forth, but that’s kind of overpowered by the happy smiling faces and the song’s fun Caribbean-like beat.

And, speaking of Caribbean-like beats, people are frolicking on the beach and Rihanna is writhing under a waterfall while people are partying and riding bikes and [descriptions of fun times, ad nauseum].

Sure, there’s some violence at the end (and, at the beginning, when she actually shoots the guy), but other than that, if you’re paying close attention it’s hard to tell what this song is even about.

So, my bottom line is this: I can see the “guilt,” but the murder was no accident. Defending oneself during an actual attack is one thing, but hunting for a gun and shooting a man the next morning isn’t the best way to “encourage female empowerment.”

What’s yours? What do you think about Rihanna’s new video? Do her defenses of it stand up, or do you lean to the side of the advocacy groups?

Image Credit: MIKeARB per these Creative Commons License Attributions.

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    Last reviewed: 3 Jun 2011