When Eminem and Rihanna‘s much-anticipated video for their new hit single “Love the Way You Lie” premiered on MTV and VEVO on August 5, the blogosphere started heating up with talk of the steamy scenes between the video’s two actors, Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan. It’s true that the video has some smoking hot scenes between the couple (literally and figuratively — the pair is actually on fire at one point), but there is also a much deeper message being portrayed.
According to an article on MTV.com, the single is about the evolution of Eminem’s relationship with his own ex-wife, Kim, which he has sung about many times before. With lyrics like “If she ever tries to leave again, I’m gonna f**king tie her to the bed and set the house on fire,” it’s clear that that relationship had a destructive, abusive element of domestic violence.
Rihanna lends her voice to the song’s chilling refrain of “Just gonna stand there and watch me burn. But it’s all right because I like the way it hurts,” which is reminiscent of her own abusive relationship with Chris Brown. In the video, Megan Fox portrays the female in a clearly abusive relationship, who wakes up one morning to find another woman’s phone number on her boyfriend’s hand. What follows is physical fighting, tears, walking out and, unfortunately, a reunion — despite Fox’s character’s black eye.
“I think we tried as hard as we could to not glorify the violence, to try and explain that this was a relationship that is by no means ideal and a relationship that probably should have ended a lot sooner than it did,” Monaghan told MTV.
Rihanna, who deeply connected with the song’s straightforward lyrics, told VH1.com: “It’s something that, you know, [Eminem and I have] both experienced, you know, on different sides, different ends of the table…. It just was authentic. It was real. It was believable for us to do a record like that, but it was also something that needed to be done and the way he did it was so clever. He pretty much just broke down the cycle of domestic violence and it’s something that a lot people don’t have a lot of insight on, so this song is a really, really powerful song and it touches a lot of people.”
Although Megan Fox did not comment on her appearance in the video, her latest action has spoken louder than words. On Thursday, Yahoo! Finance reported that the actress donated her undisclosed appearance fee to Sojourn House, a shelter for abused women. According to the article, “Sojourn provides battered women and their children a safe space to regroup, rebuild, and reestablish their self-esteem and lives.”
To learn more about dating abuse and domestic violence, visit DayOneNY.org.
Screengrabs via YouTube.