"There was good news, and then there was bad news. And it came in the same email.
Invincible, a fiercely talented hip-hop emcee from Detroit, submitted a music video for her song "Ropes" to mtvU, the MTV channel that targets college students. If aired, it would be an especially prominent platform for any indie artist, especially one who -- as a gay Jewish woman from the Midwest -- eschews the stereotypes of her genre. Invincible was told that her video had a high likelihood of being accepted and was asked to send a reformatted version. She did -- at a cost of several hundred dollars. Just a couple weeks later, though, in mid-March, Invincible received an unusual email: MTV's content department officially approved the video for airing, but the standards department rejected it. She was advised that "Ropes" was "too problematic" with its "suicidal undertones."
In fact, "Ropes" wrestles with suicide in a nuanced and empathetic way, featuring a haunting hook by Tiombe Lockhart. It splices footage of Coney Island and vintage circus acts with Invincible's rapping about how "We all walk the line between insanity and sanity / Hope and despair." When she released the video online, she added an introduction that tells of mtvU's rejection and challenging the network for silencing a serious commentary about suicide rather than engaging in a conversation about something that touches a great number of its viewers' lives:
Now, in my eyes, what I see as "problematic" is nobody wants to talk about this issue of mental health in our community. … So I wrote this song to open up the conversation; I made this video to open up this dialogue.
All true. But let me add to the list on what, exactly, is "problematic" -- MTV's blatant inconsistency when it comes to its self-declared "standards." How many problematic videos by male artists can we name that elevate homophobia, violence, sexism, and drug use in ways that are, often, far less intelligent than how Invincible wrestles with suicide in "Ropes"? ........."
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